Southern Miss easily handles team that clobbered Golden Eagles last season
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- Southern Miss defeated Jacksonville State 42-25 for its third win of 2025.
- Golden Eagles forced four turnovers and ended Jacksonville State’s red zone streak.
- Jeffery Pittman and Braylon Braxton combined for five total touchdowns in the win.
Consider the measuring stick test passed.
Southern Miss (3-2) cruised by Conference USA’s Jacksonville State (2-3) at home, 42-25, one year after the Gamecocks took the wheels off the Golden Eagles’ season.
It was USM’s first meeting of the season against a team it faced during 2024’s forgettable 1-11 campaign. Jacksonville State crushed a still-hopeful Will Hall-led team, 44-7, then. Now Charles Huff’s Eagles are over .500 five games into the year for the first time since 2019 and arrived here by emphatically crossing one off the get-back list.
“I thought we dominated today,” Huff said after the game. “It was a war out there. I thought we dominated in the back end. I thought we were flying around, I thought we were physical. I thought we threw the ball down the field, I thought we ran the ball in between the tackles. Really good job by the players.”
Southern Miss forced four turnovers, shut down one of the nation’s leading rushers and snapped the Gamecocks’ streak of red zone scores at 18. It also built its own streak with 16 consecutive possessions without allowing a touchdown going back to the first half of last week’s loss at Louisiana Tech.
“We show up for each other every game and just feed off each other,” Defensive lineman JJ Hawkins said. “That spark turns into a big fire for all of us and we just put on a show.”
By the time Jax State did find the end zone in the third quarter, Jeffery Pittman had already scored twice on the ground and Braylon Braxton had two of his three total touchdowns.
Jacksonville State’s Cam Cook was held to 77 yards rushing on 3.5 yards per carry. He entered third nationally averaging 134.3 yards a game.
It was the Golden Eagles’ first wire-to-wire win over an FBS opponent since beating ULM 24-7 in Nov. 2023.
Defense builds the tone
Two coverage busts put USM in a quick hole in Ruston last week. Once settled in, the unit forced punts on seven straight drives to close the game and five of them were three-and-outs.
The defense wasted zero time setting a different tone this week. Hawkins spiked the football out of Gavin Wimsatt’s hands on the Gamecocks’ first play from scrimmage and safety Ian Foster recovered at the 25-yard line.
That set up a one-yard plunge by Pittman for the game’s first score. When Jax State returned the favor with a strip sack of its own in the second quarter, the Gamecocks were denied in four attempts from goal-to-go and left the red zone without a score for the first time since the first half of their week one loss at UCF.
Caden Creel fumbled on the next Jax State possession, which USM took advantage of with a 6-yard touchdown scramble by Braxton to create a 21-3 halftime lead.
Josh Moten made a diving interception in the third quarter and Foster jumped a fourth quarter pass and returned it for his second pick-six of the month.
Huff and linebacker Mike Montgomery both mentioned the defensive gameplan was simplified ahead of the matchup.
“The best thing we do as a defense is communicate and line up so keeping things simple allows us to communicate faster and line up faster,” Montgomery said. The Portland State transfer led USM with nine tackles. “When we communicate and line up, we’re one of the top defenses in this conference.”
When the dust settled, the Eagles had made a season-high eight stops in the backfield, created four turnovers for the first time in 19 games and stretched their season sack total to a Sun Belt-leading 15.
Cook had his three-game 100-yard rushing streak come to an end and was held to just 46 yards on 2.7 yards a carry through the first three quarters.
“We took it personal with that running back coming in here into The Rock,” Hawkins said. “And we just defended it.”
Southern Miss heads into its first bye week and returns to action Oct. 9 with a Thursday night road match at Georgia Southern. That game has a kick time of 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN2.
The Golden Eagles won’t play at home again until Oct. 25.
This story was originally published September 27, 2025 at 9:19 PM.
