Southern Miss drops third in a row, squanders away division championship
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Southern Miss lost three straight, surrendering Sun Belt West lead mid-November
- Offense stalled, scored first TD on a fumble recovery in third quarter
- Special teams miscues and late Troy rushing sealed Southern Miss bowl fate
The Sun Belt West was Southern Miss’ to lose. And it lost it.
Troy (8-4, 6-2) handed the Golden Eagles (7-5, 5-3) a 28-18 home loss and completed USM’s three-game slide out of the divisional driver’s seat.
Southern Miss sat alone atop the West midway through November with an unblemished conference record and a six-game win streak before a blowout loss to Texas State and road loss at South Alabama forced Saturday’s division title match with Troy in the regular season finale.
The Trojans connected on a 75-yard kill shot from Goose Crowder to Rara Thomas late in the fourth quarter to cripple USM’s attempt at a late push and help seal their third trip to the conference title game in four years.
The Golden Eagles’ offense sputtered and stalled throughout the afternoon. Southern Miss did not find the end zone until the third quarter and, when it did, it was a Jeffery Pittman fumble they had to fall on in the end zone.
The special teams unit tied one hand behind USM’s back with three botched punts, a missed 28-yard field goal, a missed field goal in the fourth that would have made it a one-score game and allowing a successful fake punt that extended what would be a touchdown-scoring drive.
Southern Miss gained over half its total yards in the fourth quarter while in desperation mode, but the Trojans were able to eat clock with an offense that produced 8.1 yards a rush against a gassed defense within the final 15 minutes.
Huff pointed to a failure to execute on the details in recent weeks and even throughout the season as the primary bug in what was still ultimately a program-resetting campaign.
‘The first step’
“We have a winning culture now, that’s the first step,” Huff said. “This is no longer the 1-11 doormat of the Sun Belt. We are a winning program. We have a winning culture. To take the next step, we got to understand the value of all the little details. Sometimes these type of games do a better job than us putting it on the board. You got to go through it. We’ve made tremendous strides, but to take the next step all the little details come in.”
Even when USM strung its record to 7-2 over the first nine games, the cracks were noticeable. The team had a penalty issue. It committed six against Troy, including two holding calls that resulted in punting on a possession that began at the plus 34-yard line.
Southern Miss has not been able to slow the run or establish any semblance of a ground game itself. The Golden Eagles averaged 3.1 yards per carry against the Trojan front, which led to an average third down distance of 8.9 yards.
“Details, coach Huff always tells us it catches up to you when it catches up to you,” Braxton said. “We kind of had the same story the whole year. We were a guy off every play, we made a mistake every play. But at the beginning of the season we were fortunate enough to overcome it with making big plays, defense getting takeaways. When we people started getting a beat on us when it really mattered, we didn’t execute well enough.”
‘We were losers’
The crash-and-burn finish comes a year removed from the final whistle of a 1-11 season. The six-game improvement in one year is tied for the third best in conference history.
It’ll be the second-best turnaround the SBC has seen if USM can win its bowl game. Amidst heavy disappointment, Huff is confident he’s established a new foundation for a program historically lacking in stability.
“We were losers. We were 1-11,” Huff said. “We’re winners. We’re going to a bowl game, guys. Was the expectation to be better? Absolutely. I don’t ever expect to lose a game. We haven’t been able to consistently move the ball on offense, we haven’t been able to consistently get off the field on defense, and we keep tripping ourselves up with missed opportunities. I own that.
“But I also own the fact we’re going to a bowl game. I also own the fact our guys busted their tails to get to seven wins and a chance to get to eight. That’s a pretty dadgum good season. Am I satisfied? Absolutely not. I didn’t come here just to win bowl games, I came here to win.”
Balancing the weight of disappointment with the pride of accomplishment was a battle that played out on the podium.
Huff acknowledged the hurt of letting the division slip out of USM’s hands, but also wanted to credit the players, particularly the seniors, on helping create a new floor and a new expectation at USM.
“We won seven games with a team that had not been successful,” Huff said. “That’s not a knock to anything last year that’s just the reality of it. I think we started to form a winning culture. It became an expectation. The reason why everyone is upset and the reason why everybody is like, ‘man, you guys didn’t take advantage of an opportunity,’ is because we created an expectation of winning. That’s a positive.”
Braxton held back tears throughout his seven minutes behind the podium. The Texas native began his career at Tulsa before transferring to Marshall and eventually Southern Miss for his final season.
His 2,796 passing yards are the most in a season at USM since Jack Abraham in 2019 and his 23 passing touchdowns are the most since Nick Mullens in 2016 and more than the entire team produced in 2024.
“I feel like we set the foundation,” Braxton said. “I feel like the standard could be pushed even more, obviously, because we didn’t do what we were supposed to do the last three games. But I feel like we set a good foundation for what’s to be expected out of the Golden Eagles.”
Building on Year 1
Braxton and numerous other contributing seniors played their final game at M.M. Roberts Stadium on Saturday.
That includes four of the top five leading receivers, leading rusher Jeffery Pittman, multiple starting offensive linemen and each of the top two corners, in Josh Moten and Anthony Richard.
The personnel is less important than the process, however, according to Huff. And that process produced a conference championship at Marshall the same season USM floundered to one FCS victory in 12 games.
“If you look back at the other place, we were 6-7 the year before we got it right,” Huff said. “In that 6-7 year we lost three games by a touchdown or less. The same exact situations, the details matter. We were 6-7, and we were the worst thing in America. And we came back and looked at all the things that made us go 6-7 and 90% of them were all changeable by us. And we were able to come back and learn from that.”
When asked what the difference was between this season’s three-game slide and Marshall’s five-game win streak to end last year’s regular season, Huff says the reps involved in the first step is always critical for the next step.
Though Braxton is on the way out, he personally vouched the process.
“At the other place they were 6-7, and you know what they did the next year,” Braxton said. “I know (Huff) has the formula. I know he’s going to get back to the drawing board, and he’s going to coach even harder next year.”
Southern Miss will wait to learn its postseason destination for the school’s first bowl game since 2022.
This story was originally published November 29, 2025 at 5:55 PM.
