It wasn’t long ago that Ole Miss ended a season without a single SEC victory.

Now the Rebels are a top 15 team and preparing for one of the biggest games in program history on Saturday against No. 3 Alabama.

The Crimson Tide have remained the gold standard in college football over the last 3-5 years as Ole Miss has rebuilt its program from the ground up, beginning with the hire of head coach Hugh Freeze prior to the 2012 season. Freeze has ignited a major turnaround in Oxford, and the rest of the nation is finally taking notice as College GameDay heads to the Grove this weekend for the first time ever.

Freeze was asked about this weekend’s epic showdown with Alabama at his weekly press conference Monday afternoon, and the head coach did not hesitate to share his true feelings on the game and the week leading up to it.

“I’m going to enjoy this week. Last week, I have to be candid, it wasn’t an enjoyable week for me. This week I’m going to enjoy it,” Freeze said Monday. “I’m going to have fun. I’m going to get our kids ready and I know they’re going to play extremely hard.”

Freeze then went on to downplay the matchup a bit, saying “you can’t make too much out of a win and too much out of a loss.”

There’s no way Freeze truly believes a win wouldn’t mean much to Ole Miss considering the kind of national attention this game is already receiving six days before kickoff. A Rebels victory would launch them into the top 10 in the polls and would earn the program plenty of national notoriety. A loss, on the other hand, would be a tremendous buzz-kill in northern Mississippi.

It is worth noting that Freeze is not over-hyping the game within his program, at least not as far as the media knows. He has always preached to enjoy the process rather than focus on the results, and that attitude could pay major dividends as Ole Miss spends a week preparing for this game under a bright national spotlight.

“I really want our people to enjoy the journey,” Freeze said, also noting, “I think it’s human nature for all of us to get a big head in the clouds with what’s going on.”

It’s understandable that Ole Miss could get lost in the chaos surrounding this game, but in Tuscaloosa the Crimson Tide won’t break focus all week having played in dozens of games of this magnitude in recent years. If Ole Miss allows itself to be overwhelmed by the moment, it will be obvious in the product on the field Saturday.

Thus, Freeze insists his team must focus on the process and allow the game to take care of itself on Saturday.

“Hopefully our team plays its best game of the year,” Freeze said of Saturday’s game.

The head coach was also asked about GameDay’s visit to the Grove on Saturday and what it could mean for his program beyond this week’s game. However, his comments seemed aimed more towards the show’s significance to the university than to the football program.

“(It is) certainly going to provide for a very festive atmosphere here in Oxford, and we’re excited to showcase our university and the Grove and all of our great fans,” Freeze said.

There are thousands of Mississippians and Ole Miss alums who have waited decades for this opportunity, and Saturday’s showdown with the Tide is as big a deal to them as it is to Freeze and his team.

Ole Miss has looked like one of the premier teams in the nation through four weeks, averaging 39 points per game on offense and 8.5 points allowed per game on defense. Alabama is not far off in either category, averaging 42 points per game on offense and 14 points allowed per game on defense.

It should be a true clash of titans inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium this Saturday, and as Freeze so eloquently put it Monday: “Something’s got to give at some point.”