Hugh Freeze had some spryness to him on Monday morning during his weekly press conference.

He and the Auburn Tigers were coming off the bye week, which came on the heels of Auburn pushing the No. 1 team in the country to the brink the Saturday prior.

Freeze gave a funny-sounding impression of former Ole Miss head coach Johnny Vaught and talked about how much he liked Garth Brooks and hearing “Callin’ Baton Rouge” played at LSU’s Tiger Stadium.

Auburn’s head coach was light and loose, despite an approaching game against the 22nd-ranked team in the country at a place that he’d never won a game at as a head coach.

But it didn’t take long for reality to come in the form of a haymaker Saturday night in Baton Rouge as Auburn dropped its third straight game of the season in a 48-18 loss to No. 22 LSU.

All week, between comments about Garth Brooks and answering questions about what he learned about his team during the bye week, Freeze gushed about quarterback Jayden Daniels and LSU’s offense.

If he were on the Heisman committee, Daniels would be one of his frontrunners, Freeze said.

Freeze also went on to – in a way – wave the white flag and admit that stopping Daniels and Co. would be unlikely and that holding the Bayou Bengals to field goals and winning the time-of-possession battle would be Auburn’s focus when the lights kicked on Saturday night.

After winning the coin toss, Auburn elected to defer to the second half and give Daniels and Co. the ball first – meaning Auburn’s defense would have its gut checked quick.

LSU needed just four plays to travel 75 yards and eclipse the goal line on its first offensive possession.

In Auburn’s first drive, Payton Thorne and the Tigers’ offense ran three plays, had to burn a timeout, went backwards 10 yards and used up just 1:15 of game clock – meaning through one series of defense and one series of offense, Auburn was 0-for-2 on accomplishing either of the goals Freeze mentioned earlier in the week.

“That’s not what we needed,” Freeze said after the game. “That was certainly not a good way to start.”

The Auburn defense successfully held LSU to a field goal in the unit’s second trip out onto the field, but Thorne and the offense didn’t hold up on its end of the bargain and once again went three-and-out on a drive that traveled just two yards and used up just 1:13 of play clock.

After the Auburn offense’s drive to nowhere, the Auburn defense once again gave way to Daniels and the LSU offense, which orchestrated a six-play, 65-yard scoring drive to give LSU a 17-0 advantage.

The three-score hole Auburn found itself in was the result of the Tigers going 1-for-5 in their efforts to hold LSU to field goals and win the time of possession battle, with holding LSU to a field goal in its second drive being the lone success.

By halftime, LSU scored a pair of touchdowns and a pair of field goals during its six full possessions, which ate away at 17:48 of the first half game clock.

Of the two keys of the game Freeze laid out early in the week, Auburn wasn’t succeeding at either of them through one half of play.

And things didn’t get much better in the second half.

Though Auburn was able to close in on the time of possession battle some in the third and fourth quarters as Thorne and Robby Ashford were able to sustain longer drives with the Tigers’ offense, Daniels and LSU still finished with the upper hand.

At game’s end, LSU’s offense had possession of the ball for a total of 34:13, while Auburn’s offense had possession for just 25:47.

“I felt really good about the plan. I felt like we had a chance to maybe get some long drives and keep our defense on the sideline,” Freeze said. “We just never found any consistency, so it’s disappointing, for sure.”

Meanwhile, Auburn’s defense folded like a lawn chair in the second half, allowing Daniels and the LSU offense to score touchdowns in each of their four second-half possessions. And also meaning Auburn didn’t hold LSU to a single field goal in the second half.

The 48 points LSU scored Saturday night were the most Auburn has ever given up to the Bayou Bengals.

“Obviously a difficult night for us,” Freeze said after the game, hands folded across his chest. “They beat us every way that you could. We had no answers defensively for them.”

The tone in which Freeze spoke with Saturday night was far different than the one he spoke with Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday night during his weekly media availabilities.

Then again, the result of Saturday night’s game was likely far different than what Freeze envisioned throughout the week as he formulated what he thought might be a successful two-key gameplan to combat LSU.

But then a heavy dose of reality struck as offensive inconsistencies spurned hopes of winning the time of possession battle and LSU’s defense proved to be the exact unstoppable force piloted by a Heisman hopeful that Freeze feared it would be.

That spryness that Freeze displayed Monday had disappeared.

But hey, at least “Callin’ Baton Rouge” was an enjoyable experience.