Southern Miss riding wave of momentum as it preps for Old Dominion

HATTIESBURG -- Things went so well in Southern Miss' 65-10 Conference USA football victory over Rice on Saturday that even the holder on field goals threw a touchdown pass.

With the score 7-0 in favor of the Golden Eagles, USM lined up at the 6-yard line for Stephen Brauchle to kick a 23-yard field goal. But instead of placing the ball down for Brauchle to kick, holder Tyler Sarrazin got up, ran to the left side and flipped the ball to Xavier Thigpen, normally a defensive end, who rumbled a few yards, then stretched his 6-foot-5, 240-pound body to where the football just crossed the goal line.

Touchdown, Southern Miss.

"Every week, Coach (John Wozniak) and the special team gurus always come up with an idea. This week, that was the one, the option with the shovel pitch underneath," said holder Tyler Sarrazin. "Depending on the look we've got, we have the ability to check out of it and just kick it or if they show us the look we expected, the one that we needed to run the play, we call it, we execute it."

Execute it they did. Sarrazin, also the punter, flipped the ball forward to Thigpen for the score with 9:22 remaining in the second quarter, giving the Eagles a 14-0 lead.

Less than two minutes later, USM scored on a 50-yard pass from Nick Mullens to Michael Thomas.

Less than two minutes later, USM scored on a 51-yard pass from Mullens to Thomas.

Less than two minutes later, USM scored on a 13-yard pass from Mullens to DJ Thompson.

Southern Miss led 35-0 and there was more to come.

Mullens finished the Rice game passing for 386 yards and five touchdowns and Monday was named the Conference USA Offensive Player of the Week for the second time this season.

The win gives USM a 7-3 record. It is 5-1 in Conference USA, tied with Louisiana Tech atop the West Division standings.

USM plays at Louisiana Tech on Nov. 28 in a game that will decide the C-USA West, but this Saturday, the Eagles play their final regular-season home game against Old Dominion (5-5, 3-3) at 2:30 p.m.

Head coach Todd Monken would love to see the same type of play from his Eagles that he saw against Rice.

"We played awfully well in all three phases," Monken said. "We didn't start off fast, didn't hit some shots early on. We scored on only one of the first three possessions but after that we scored on nine straight possessions. The one that started it was the fake field goal.

"So if you can score on special teams, which we did, then defensively we were very disruptive. You're not going to get much better than that. We just made a lot of plays."

With the dominating win over Rice, Southern Miss is now in first place in Conference USA in both total offense (525.1 yards per game) and in total defensive (346.9 yards per game). It also tops C-USA in rushing offense (185.7 yards per game).

USM is second in Conference USA in scoring defense (21.4 points per game), pass offense (339.4 yards per game), pass defense (186.2 yards per game), kickoff returns (24.2 yards per kickoff) and in pass efficiency and pass defense efficiency.

Meanwhile, Sarrazin said Monday that he's been rubbing in the fact that he threw a touchdown pass to some of the quarterbacks.

"Not Nick," he said emphatically. "I told Parker (Adamson), I room with him, I said, 'Parker, your boy over here has more pass touchdowns than you.' He kind of laughed. It was fun to mess around with him and Tyler Matthews on the sideline about it."

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Southern Miss riding wave of momentum as it preps for Old Dominion ."