Hugh Freeze had high praise for the Auburn defense on Saturday night as Auburn escaped Cal with a narrow victory. The offense? Not so much.

“I don’t think we could have played any uglier or sloppier on offense. I’m really proud of our defense,” Freeze said. “All the credit goes to to to that side of the ball tonight. There’s going to be nights where we can score 50 and we might have to to win. And there’s going to be times where they got to hold them to 10 and we got to score 11. This is one of those nights with how poorly we played on our offense.”

Freeze was happy to escape with the victory even after a less-than-desirable effort.

“We found a way to win and we can grow from that,” Freeze said. “I think that’s what this season’s really about, is us finding a way to grow and and get better each week. We got better defensively tonight. We took a step back offensively. It’s very uncharacteristic. We really take pride everywhere we’ve been in not having many penalties and not turning the ball over and boy tonight was not that.”