By Robert Wilson
Despite losing its last four games of the season, Southern Miss made one of the biggest turnarounds in the country, finishing with a 7-6 record, six more victories than last year’s 1-11 mark..
Southern Miss lost to Western Kentucky 27-16 Tuesday night in the New Orleans Bowl at the Louisiana Superdome for its fourth straight loss after being 7-2 and within one game of winning the Sun Belt Conference Western Division and playing in the Sun Belt championship game.
It was Blake Anderson’s debut as Southern Miss head coach after he was promoted from offensive coordinator to interim head coach when first-year Southern Miss head coach Charles Huff took the head coaching job at Memphis two weeks ago, then Anderson was promoted to permanent head coach last week.
Anderson – who has been a head coach for a combined 10 seasons at Arkansas State and Utah State – believes his team, especially the seniors, deserve a tremendous amount of praise, respect and credit for what they accomplished this season.
“You look at 1-11 to 7-6 and it is still a huge step in the right direction,” Anderson said. “I don’t want the work that these guys did to get lost in that (ending the season with four losses). There were a million factors losing down the stretch. Going into this game, the amount that these guys had on their plate, with all the transition and everything, that’s a lot. I don’t want to lose sight on what this senior class did in general. Most people don’t make that jump. Give them the respect and credit for what they did. Our guys did a phenomenal job to put us in a position to have some momentum to get back to a bowl and be competitive in the league. I’m pleased with that. It was a big challenge for these guys and give them credit for holding it together. They chose to play for each other and I appreciate that. The 20 or so guys who chose to come play for Coach Huff from Marshall and then you take him out of the equation and when I became the interim they could have very easily said, ‘Ah, you know we aren’t doing this.’ They did a great job of being respectful, working their tails off, and we had great practices this last week, and we played hard tonight, we didn’t play great and didn’t execute great, but played hard. That’s all you can ask those guys to do. It’s been a huge challenge for everybody involved, including me. I tried to do my very best to keep myself out of the limelight, push the seniors forward and let them finish. My only regret is that I didn’t get them to the finish line with a win. They deserve that and I wish I could have helped them deliver that. We fell short.”
“It’s been rough,” Hartfield Academy alumnus and Southern Miss sophomore linebacker Chris Jones said. “Any time a coach leaves before one of the biggest game of the year, it’s hard. I feel like we handled it well. All the players came together and decided we are going to play in this game. A lot of us didn’t have to, the seniors didn’t have to. We still went out and played and gave it all. It was rough and we got through it.”
“We took the bull by the horns,” Southern Miss senior quarterback Braylon Braxton said. “We set a standard at the beginning of the season. There were going to be some bumps in the road with Coach Huff leaving, but I feel like we did a good job.”
Anderson also admires the players who stayed after last year’s one win season.
I said this to a bunch of people. How many of us would have chose 1-11?,” Anderson said. “There were so many other places they could have gone. A lot of places they could have gone for more money. They chose this place because they believe in Coach Huff. They chose this place because they believed in each other. Even though we did fall short late, they did turn the page and brought us into contention in the league all season. They chose hard work where a lot of places where a lot of folks wouldn’t. We had a run for a while and gave out of juice at the end. The feat that they accomplished is still huge. I appreciate them tremendously for how they treated me all year. They did great in a short window with a lot of odds stacked against them.”
“I was here when we were 1-11 and now we are 7-6,” Jones said. “God gives you the story and how He wants to write it. It can be rough, it can be hard.”
“Hopefully, we gave the people of Hattiesburg something to look forward to and be excited for,” Braxton said. “Coach Anderson is going to be a great head coach and put together a great staff, and be competitive. This was my last college game and I’m a Southern Miss alum, I graduated from here.”
Braxton completed 24 of 47 passes for 258 yards and one touchdown in the bowl game. It was his 24th TD pass this season, the most in the Sun Belt.
He had an outstanding college career, especially his last two seasons. He was named the Sun Belt Conference Offensive Player of the Year after passing for 1,624 yards and 19 touchdowns and leading Marshall to the Sun Belt championship last year as a junior, then he passed for 3,053 yards and 24 TDs despite being injured, missing one game and not fully healthy in the last two regular season games this season.
Braxton passed for a career-high 400 yards against South Alabama this season, tying for the eighth most passing yards in a game in school history.
He has passed for 6,022 yards (1,345 at Tulsa, 1,624 at Marshall and 3,053 at Southern Miss) and 55 TDs (12 at Tulsa, 19 at Marshall and 24 at Southern Miss) in his college career.
Braxton suffered a right knee injury against Arkansas State in the ninth game of the season, missed the Texas State game and wasn’t 100 percent in the last two regular season games in losses to South Alabama and Troy.
“I wanted to be known as the New Orleans Bowl champion, but that didn’t happen,” Braxton said. “I want to be known as great teammate, a great leader. I want my teammates to be able to pick the phone and call me whether it’s next year or five years from now and tell me what’s going on. I just want to be known as a great guy. I feel like I worked my best every day to be the best leader and best quarterback I could be.”
“Braylon has been the one leader who has kept us all together. I look up to him,” Jones said. “He represents what it means to be a leader.”
“Braylon did a phenomenal job coming back from what we’ve seen over the last month in terms of how the knee was,’ Anderson said. “He did an amazing job of battling through it and giving us a chance.”
Anderson feels Southern Miss must improve its offensive line in the future.
“We are not consistent enough, don’t run the ball consistent enough, that falls on me. It starts in recruiting,” Anderson said. “We’ve got to beef up our O line, so we can run the ball when we need to. We need to put time, energy and money into beefing up the O line. Kyle (Cefalo) coming as the OC (Southern Miss’ new offensive coordinator who comes from his position as passing coordinator at California) and his perspective, and I will get a 1,000 foot view where we can make some changes and adjustments. We have been beat up. There are million things to fix – from recruiting, to the offseason. I know if you own the front (line of scrimmage), you have a chance to win. If you don’t, it’s going to be really difficult. That’s where our efforts will be moving to the offseason. “
With the season officially over, Anderson now looks ahead to build his roster for next season.
“I have met with every player that has the possibility to return,” Anderson said. “A handful said they are staying, a handful said they are going with Coach Huff as expected because he brought a lot of those guys there, and there a lot who are undecided. There is a lot of noise outside of our building. Guys being tugged in a million different directions. We are going to keep some, we are going to lose some. Some maybe we didn’t think we would. Some that we probably shouldn’t because the voices are loud. We are going to dissect the problem once we know who has decided to do what. We are going to recruit the guys that have a possibility to coming back over the course of the next couple of weeks leading up to the portal. When you have a transition as quickly as we had with Coach Huff being there roughly a year and bringing as many players as he did, there is going to be some attrition. We just have to deal with it. There a lot of players who want to be here. There are a lot of players at the high school level, junior college level and guys who will go into the portal who will see value at our place and see what we have started. We will build a roster and find a way to be competitive. That’s what I have done at the last two stops where I have been with similar attrition and circumstances. We will work the problem in the offseason. We can get better in every phase, in everything. Take the next step, build on what we did, and try to stabilize the program for the future. That was the job that I took on. Let’s stabilize this thing so we can competitive every year. Lets see what holes we need to fill and let’s fix them and go to work.”
