By Robert Wilson
Six hundred sixty-three days.
That’s how long it has been since Southern Miss won a Sun Belt conference football game before a 38-22 victory over Appalachian State Saturday at Southern Miss’ M.M. Roberts Stadium in Hattiesburg.
And a big reason why it was the first conference win since a 34-31 victory over Louisiana-Lafayette on Nov. 9, 2023 was because of the Golden Eagles created turnovers.
Southern Miss intercepted three passes – all in the red zone, including one for a 99-yard touchdown by sophomore safety and Marshall transfer Ian Foster – to gain momentum and push the Eagles over the the top Saturday in the Appalachian State win.
Turnovers were one of the big factors for Southern Miss’ 1-11 record last season. The Golden Eagles were last among the 129 FBS teams with 29 turnovers and last in turnover margin with minus 19.
But first-year Southern Miss coach Charles Huff and first-year defensive coordinator Jason Semore has flipped the switch on turnover margin this season.
After the three interception performance Saturday, Southern Miss is tied for 25th nationally in turnover margin with a plus one (six interceptions to five interceptions with no fumbles and no fumbles recovered).
Unlike last season, Southern Miss is playing opportunistic football.
“I know everybody wants us to stop them every play,” Huff said. “They’re a good offense. So we talk about on defense suffering well, right? You respond. You’ve got to come up with an opportunistic moment. You know, when you get an opportunity. When I was at Penn State, one of the things that they always used to say, ‘run to the ball Franco,’ that was (former Penn State head coach) Joe Paterno, you always coach your defensive players to run to the ball. Because when you run to the ball, good things happen. That’s something that I’ve always carried with me, what Ian Foster did, is you run to the ball, but obviously, when they come out in that first drive, they’ve got openers, they’ve got things that they plan to attack our defense with. We have to be able to adjust. We went right down the field on them too. So I guess it went both ways. But obviously there’s, there’s things we can improve on. You got to tackle in space, and there’s some things that we do defensively. Not to give up an 80 yard play, you got to kind of make some decisions. We got three kills tonight, three consecutive possessions with no points. If you get three of them, you probably got a 90 percent chance of winning. I got that philosophy from (Coach) Shaka Smart of Marquette basketball, three trips down the court no points. They count those as kills. So we kind of do the same thing. We get three in a game. That’s nine possessions where they don’t have points. You got a pretty good chance to win most games. You’re going to have somewhere between 12 maybe 15 possessions in the whole game. So if you think nine of them there’s no points, it’s pretty good. So we got to continue to look at some things, but overall, ultimately, we got to suffer well and find a way to get off the field.”
Senior cornerback and Marshall transfer Anthony Richard had Southern Miss’ first turnover with an interception in the end zone on second and goal on Appalachian State’s first drive of the game.
Foster had the second interception and returned it 99 yards for a score on third and goal to give Southern Miss a 17-7 lead with 10 minutes, 55 seconds to play in the second quarter. Foster caught the ball after it bounced up off a stumbling Appalachian State player at the 1-yard line and took off down the sideline. It was the third longest interception return in school history.
Sophomore linebacker and Marshall transfer Mathis Haygood had Southern Miss’ third interception when he intercepted a pass in the end zone on third and goal and returned 18 yards with 5:54 to play before halftime.
Three scoring drives – all within several yards of a touchdown – were stopped by turnovers. Those three drives could have easily resulted in 21 points would have given Appalachian State momentum and the lead heading into halftime.
“there’s some things that you know teams do in certain areas of the field that you can kind of predict, or at least have an idea in this area of the field, red zone, low red, high red,” Huff said. “They like these type of concepts or these runs. Coach Semore does a good job of really dialing down certain concepts in certain areas of the field and taking those away. Doesn’t mean they can’t run something else, but when you get an opportunity, you got to make a play. We’ve talked about that. It’s the same thing in class. You get an opportunity to make an A you gotta make an A man. They’re hard to make. You get an opportunity to do something positive on the field. You got to do it and I thought we stepped up today.”
The three interceptions weren’t the only big defensive plays for Southern Miss. Junior defensive lineman and Arizona State transfer J’Mond Tapp had three sacks, one short of the school record.
Even though Southern Miss allowed 27 first downs and 470 total yards to Appalachian State, Huff was pleased with his defense.
“That’s why we have these metrics,” Huff said. “Because you can’t really look at this stat sheet and say, oh, well, we held them to x amount of yards rushing, x amount of yards passing. You’ve got to have some metrics that are that defense friendly.
They walk the ball down the field, and we got a turnover. I’ll take that every day, walk the ball
all the way down the field, and we have another turnover. I’ll take that every day. But if you
look at the stat sheet, they probably had 200 yards on those two drives alone. So the offenses are too good, so it’s really not a stats thing anymore.
You’ve got to create some. We call it momentum stoppers. How do you stop momentum? You get them off the field at some point, not just necessarily three and out. Maybe it’s six and out, you know, from a defensive perspective, maybe it’s getting down in
the red zone and forcing a field goal rather than giving up six. Maybe it’s forcing a missed kick, you know, whatever that may be.”
Southern Miss – the only team in the 14-team Sun Belt not to win a conference last season – is 1-0 in conference play for the first time since 2019. The Golden Eagles haven’t had a winning conference record since a 5-3 record in 2019 under Jay Hopson.
Huff, who won the conference last season at Marshall, says those times of losing records are gone.
This ain’t the same old Southern Miss, and it won’t be ever again as long as I’m here,” Huff said.“So we got a lot of work to do, but you’re not just coming here and chalking up a win. It’s going to be
a battle, it’s going to be competitive, it’s going to be disciplined, it’s going to be coach hard and play hard. I’m not saying we’re going to win every game, but you just don’t get on the plane and come to Hattiesburg anymore and expect to leave with a win. It’s not happening ever again. As long as I’m here now. We may lose next week, but it won’t be
because we just went out there and showed up. It’s going to be because they came down, out competed us out, and opportunity us, but it’s not the same old Southern Miss.”
Southern Miss goes for its second straight league win Saturday at 6:30 p.m. when it visits Louisiana Tech, 2-1 overall and 1-0 in conference play, in Ruston, La.
