Despite skid, Southern Miss about to play its most meaningful game in years
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- Southern Miss climbed from 1-10 in 2024 to division contender, now facing slump.
- Two straight losses exposed run-and-screen vulnerability and turnover decline.
- Saturday’s winner plays James Madison on road for conference title.
This week, one year ago, Southern Miss was a 1-10 football team.
Twelve months later and the Golden Eagles are reeling again. It’s a two-game skid that has rattled a fan base, blemished what was a sparkling 7-2 record and forced USM into playing in a division title game.
The horror.
Southern Miss’ six-game improvement from 2024 is tied for the third-best in Sun Belt Conference history. In 12 short months, the program has risen from laughingstock to contender in coach Charles Huff’s first season.
Huff is one win away from returning to the SBC title game for the second year in a row after beating Louisiana for the crown last December.
The books in Las Vegas gave this team 4.5 wins before the first whistle was blown.
Southern Miss does arrive to its regular season finale with a limp. The Golden Eagles had rattled off six consecutive wins before Texas State showed up in Hattiesburg and rolled USM, 41-14.
A week later the Eagles failed for the sixth time to beat rival South Alabama in a 42-35 loss that the Jags led in 35-7 at one point.
Both losses came to divisional opponents and neither of them destined for a postseason game. Southern Miss has already locked in a bowl game, its first since 2022, but can add a second game to its schedule if it can defeat Troy on Saturday.
The Trojans are on their own upswing, jumping from 4-8 a year ago to the same 7-4 record currently held by USM. Troy’s season hasn’t gone much differently, either. It put together five consecutive wins over the middle of the season before its momentum came to a crash caused by back-to-back losses against Arkansas State and Old Dominion.
Both teams have been forced to use two quarterbacks in recent games to mixed results. The Trojans are expected to start Goose Crowder, who leads a much different offense then his backup Tucker Kilcrease did while Crowder recovered from an early-season injury.
And that may work in USM’s favor. Texas State exposed the Eagles to their Kryptonite two weeks ago and USA copied the formula: run and screen.
Texas State ran 68 plays and 75 percent of them were run plays — the most rush-heavy USM had seen all year — and gained 258 yards on them.
South Alabama ran the ball on 66.7% of its 78 plays and when it did throw the ball, half of them were behind the line of scrimmage. The Jags would finish with 268 yards rushing and collected 96 of them on an easy 5.3 yards per carry through the A gaps.
Nobody in FBS football had a healthier turnover margin heading into week 12 than USM did. In the two weeks since, however, it’s given the ball away four times and failed to record a takeaway of its own.
Troy has been among the least screen-reliant teams in the conference and has averaged just 78 yards per game in its last three times out.
Crowder made his first start since the Memphis game on Sept. 13 last week against Georgia State and covered a career-best 361 yards through the air.
Whether Troy stays with the hot hand and its own strength or adjusts into its own weakness to exploit USM’s will go a long way in determining Saturday’s outcome.
In any event, Hattiesburg will host a meaningful November football game for the first time in three years and the winner will be rewarded with a road game against East Division champ and College Football Playoff hopeful James Madison.
Southern Miss and Troy will kick off at 2:30 p.m. on ESPN+.
