Southern Miss blown out at home by South Florida. Where do Golden Eagles go from here?

A red hot start to the game by Southern Miss was quickly erased and forgotten Saturday in a 49-24 home loss to old Conference USA foe South Florida.

The Golden Eagles raced out to a 14-0 lead after opening the game with two long touchdown drives, but watched as the Bulls responded with 28 unanswered points and never regained footing.

“Disappointed,” Southern Miss coach Will Hall said after the game. “You can see the talent, you can see the flashing, you can see the improvement in a lot of areas. ... Just disappointed we had a chance to win a big game right here at home versus a really good football team, but that’s not good enough.”

Quarterback Tate Rodemaker started the game and completed 10 of 15 passes for 120 yards and two touchdowns. He led drives of 87 and 65 yards and threw touchdown passes to Kyirin Heath and Kenyon Clay.

Following four empty possessions, a turnover and a bad ankle under Rodemaker, Ethan Crawford took over at quarterback and promptly led a four-play, 75-yard touchdown drive just before the half.

But a third quarter interception and an unstoppable Bulls offense that racked up 562 total yards allowed USF to pull away in the second half.

The loss pins USM with a losing record three games into the season for the fifth straight year.

Momentum and mistakes

Southern Miss battled a familiar third opponent throughout the night: Self-inflected miscues that shifted momentum and dampened the positives.

A Davis Dalton fumble put a sudden end to the Eagles’ hot offensive start. Southern Miss was averaging 11 yards per play through its first 17 snaps up to that point, before dropping to just two yards a play over the next three possessions.

On the opening drive of the second half, Crawford led the offense on a 68-yard drive that initially appeared to cut the Bulls’ lead to one score. But true freshman Reed Jesiolowski stepped on the boundary at the five-yard line on his way into the end zone after converting a fourth and short, and Crawford threw an interception just two plays later.

“As far as matching up, we were there,” Hall said. “We could play. We just didn’t consistently execute over a period of time and the game really came down to that.”

Penalties extended USF scoring drives, a 42-yard punt was returned 39 yards, a field goal was missed, three red zone trips ended without a touchdown and just one third down was converted in 10 tries.

The multi-phasal shortcomings were prevalent in the first halves against Kentucky and Southeastern Louisiana and continued to mettle and undermine what good the Eagles could do. Southern Miss entered the game with a Sun Belt-worst 14 plays of 10-plus yards and popped 16 such plays against the Bulls.

But errors and missed opportunities all but erased the impact of USM’s best offensive outing by yardage in a regular season non-conference FBS game since 2019.

“We have a lot of talent,” said wide receiver Ty Mims — who had 128 receiving yards on six catches. “If we just do our jobs we can win the rest of our games. I’m telling you. But we did leave a lot on the field out there.”

Existential crisis

South Florida is coming off its first winning season since 2017 and has only had four winning seasons since 2011. Bulls coach Alex Golesh won a bowl game last year in his first campaign and was within five points of Alabama in the fourth quarter of Week 2.

The rapid rise of USF within the Group of Five’s American Conference stands in stark contrast to the USM rebuild, now in year four under Hall and struggling to bear the fruits of recruiting and development.

The Bulls didn’t need to be reliant upon feasting on Golden Eagle mistakes. South Florida quarterback Byrum Brown led an offense that rushed for 369 yards and converted on eight of 14 third down attempts with the exact same average distant to go as USM.

This from a roster whose average recruiting ranking over the last three classes is just 73rd compared to USM’s 85th.

“We came here to be thought of as a top Group of Five program in America,” Hall said. “That team right there is thought of as one of those teams that have a chance to be that. We were toe to toe with them for a long time and they stretched it out and kicked our butt late.”

Southern Miss is now 14-26 under Hall, which is the worst record through the first 40 games of any of the 10 USM coaches whose Golden Eagle career lasted at least that long.

Hall believes he has the talent to win now, but will need to quickly clean up mistakes and self-created disadvantages to show the needed improvement required to prolong a contract that expires at the conclusion of the 2024 season.

“You can see the explosiveness is there,” Hall said. “We just have to finish... We’ve got to do that. Talk is cheap. We’ve got to get that done and we will. We will get it done. We will get it done next week and we will get it done going into conference play. This is a good football team and they will prove that as this year goes on. We were not tonight and that’s on me.”

Southern Miss will go on the road next week for its final non-conference clash at Jacksonville State. That game is scheduled to kick at 2 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN+.

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