Todd Shulenberger stood for three minutes on Monday and did not spin any of it. That is worth saying first, because a 0-5 conference record gives a coach every incentive to talk about effort and nothing else.
He talked about effort. He also told the room exactly which part of his team he is unhappy with, and it is not the part most people would guess.
Just our soft goals we’re giving up. I mean, at the end of the day, you can say we haven’t scored enough, and that’s true, but the goals we’ve given up, I’ve been disappointed in for sure.
Todd Shulenberger
Fifteen goals in five conference matches. He is not wrong to be disappointed. But run the five games out in order and something awkward happens to the argument.
🧮 The Five Games, In Order
| Date | Opponent | Result | Goals allowed | Goals scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 11 | Mississippi State (H) | L 1-4 | 4 | 1 |
| Sep 18 | at Auburn | L 0-3 | 3 | 0 |
| Sep 24 | #3 Vanderbilt (H) | L 0-4 | 4 | 0 |
| Sep 27 | Texas (H) | L 0-2 | 2 | 0 |
| Oct 2 | at #5 Alabama | L 0-2 | 2 | 0 |
The thing Shulenberger is disappointed in is the thing that has improved. Goals allowed have gone 4, 3, 4, 2, 2 — and the two best defensive performances of the conference season are the two most recent, one of them on the road against a top-five team.
The thing he conceded in a subordinate clause is the thing that has stopped entirely. One goal in five SEC matches. Four consecutive shutouts. Ole Miss has not scored a conference goal since September 11 against Mississippi State.
Both halves of that are his own sentence. He said the goals allowed bother him and he said “you can say we haven’t scored enough, and that’s true.” He just put the emphasis on the first one, and the scoreboard has been putting it on the second one for three and a half weeks.
⚖️ “Even In Shots, Down Two At Half”
On Friday night in Tuscaloosa, his account of the match is the season in miniature.
First half was, I mean, you’re even with them in shots and all the stats are even, but you’re down 2 goals at half. That’s tough to do on the road at a very good team, obviously a top 5 team in America. And then the second half, you know, it was an even game, scoreless.
Todd Shulenberger
Even in the run of play, two down at the break. That is the definition of the soft goals he is talking about — and then a scoreless forty-five that was scoreless in both directions.
He also gave the structural defense of the record, and it checks out:
I think our first 5 games, all these teams are top 20 RPI. So we’re getting pushed around a little bit, but we’re still grinding. We’re still working. These girls are still positive.
Todd Shulenberger
Two of the five were ranked in the national top five at kickoff. A third, Mississippi State, is the rivalry game. The SEC did not ease anybody in.
📉 The Line He Drew Himself
Asked whether the team is improving with the record set aside, Shulenberger answered “100%” twice, and then said the quiet part:
I mean, again, you go 7-1, you win those games, and now you — a little bit of a downfall… But I mean, you’re playing great competition. We’re getting better… But at the end of the day, it’s about results. We got to get some here.
Todd Shulenberger
“You go 7-1” is not a figure of speech. Ole Miss opened the season 7-1 across eight non-conference matches — the only loss by two goals at home to a ranked Memphis side. Then the conference schedule started and the team has not won since.
So 7-6 is not a .538 season. It is a 7-1 season and an 0-5 season sitting in the same row of a standings table.
🔁 The Kira Mitchell Move
The one performance he singled out came with a tactical note attached.
I thought Kira Mitchell had a fantastic game. She really did. We had to — we made a move positionally for her, and tweak some things around, trying to get some more offense going. So I thought she was really good on Friday night.
Todd Shulenberger
Read the middle clause again: “trying to get some more offense going.” That is a staff moving a player out of position in October specifically to solve the scoring problem — which tells you the coaching staff’s internal priority list looks a little different from the answer he gave about soft goals.
Asked whether a mid-season position change is hard on a player, he waved it off, and the reasoning is a recruiting philosophy more than a tactic:
She’s played there, but it’s just — they gotta adapt, they can be flexible. We try to recruit kids that are multi-talented, different positions already. So it wasn’t new for her. She’s done that before.
Todd Shulenberger
🏆 Twelve Of Sixteen, And Zero Points
This is the part of the availability that actually sets the stakes for the rest of October, and Shulenberger brought it up himself while scouting Georgia.
There’s a separation between the conference right now, between top half and bottom half, and it’s going to come down to points down the road to get these points to get into that SEC tournament.
Todd Shulenberger
Here is the math he is describing. The SEC Tournament takes the top twelve of sixteen and runs November 8-15 at the Ashton Brosnaham Soccer Complex in Pensacola. Four teams stay home.
Ole Miss has zero conference points with five matches left. This is the whole runway:
| Date | Match | Time (CT) | TV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri, Oct 9 | at Georgia | 6:30 p.m. | SEC Network+ |
| Thu, Oct 15 | Missouri (H) | 6:00 p.m. | SEC Network |
| Sun, Oct 18 | Oklahoma (H) | 3:00 p.m. | SEC Network+ |
| Fri, Oct 23 | at Kentucky | 7:30 p.m. | SEC Network+ |
| Sun, Nov 1 | at Texas A&M | Noon | SEC Network |
That Missouri-Oklahoma pair at home on October 15 and 18 is the season compressed into seventy-two hours. Those are the two most winnable fixtures on the board and they are the only two in Oxford. Take nothing from them and the arithmetic is effectively finished before the trip to Lexington.
🗓️ Friday Night In Athens
Georgia first, and Shulenberger did not pretend it was a break in the schedule.
Great Georgia team. They’re hungry like we are, right? … They just came off a win against A&M, but they’re definitely hungry as well. So it’s going to be a battle.
Todd Shulenberger
And the standard he set for the week, which is the one sentence to hold the team to:
You can’t do what you do non-conference and then go out here and get bullied around in the SEC. So they got to figure that out. We’re pushing it, coaching it, and they’re definitely trying every day.
Todd Shulenberger
The honest read on this team: the defense has already started figuring it out. Two goals allowed in each of the last two, one of those at a top-five opponent on the road, is a real trend and not a moral victory. The scoring is the emergency. Four straight shutouts is not a slump — it is a team that has stopped generating the one thing that converts a close loss into a point.
A positional change was made to fix exactly that. Friday night in Athens is the first look at whether it worked.
Ole Miss at Georgia, Friday, October 9, 6:30 p.m. CT on SEC Network+. More Ole Miss coverage all week at olemisshub.com.