HATTIESBURG, MS– The Herd starts the final four game stretch of the regular season in Hattiesburg where Coach Todd Monken is in the second year of a major rebuilding project. The Golden Eagles won just one game last year. They’ve already bested that this year with three wins and Doc Holliday says Southern Miss is an improving football team.
“Southern Miss is a much improved team. Todd (Monken) has them playing hard and that defensive front will be the best defensive front we’ve played to date,” said coach Doc Holliday.
Center Chris Jasperse says it is evident on film that Southern Miss is starting to believe in Monken and the rest of the coaching staff.
“I think they all bought into the system now. Last year, you could watch flim and be like ‘hey, what are they doing?’ Now, they’re on the same page and doing the right things.”
The strength of the Golden Eagle defense is up front along the defensive line. Junior Rakeem Nunez-Roches anchors the front four and is an NFL caliber lineman. He missed the final ten games of 2013 with a foot injury. This season he has posted 50 tackles, collecting a career high 11 stops against UTEP to go along with a pair of sacks.
“They’ve got a bunch of guys that can run around,” scouted Jasperse. “Nunez-Roaches is NFL caliber.”
Senior Dasman McCullum was named the conference Defensive player of the week following the Appalachian State game in which he collected a career-best 10 tackles, forced a fumble, recovered a fumbled and blocked an extra point. Offensive coordinator Bill Legg says success for the defense starts up front.
“They’ve got four really good defensive linemen and roll in some other guys who are solid guys. One of the reasons they’ve been so heavy man coverage is because they haven’t had to coverage for lengths of time because of what they’re able to do in their front,” explained offensive coordinator Bill Legg.
Southern Miss will try to make up for what it lacks in athleticism on defense by trying to confuse the offense. Legg says they’ll show different looks trying to disguise blitzes and coverages.
“They’ll make you think they’re blitzing when they’re really covering you man, then you end up with five or six man pressures when it wasn’t intended to be a five or six man pressure. Then they will still blitz you on top of that and still play man behind it. They do have a zone blitz that is significantly different that anybody else’s which creates a problem,” said Legg.
On the back end of the defense, Jacorius Cotton is back and anchors the defensive backfield. Emmanuel Johnson has also been a fixture in the Southern Miss backfield. He was a 2013 C-USA honorable mention selection. He also forced a fumble against Marshall last season. Eric Fronhnapfel is expecting to get a lot of one-on-one opportunities.
“At the beginning of the season we were seeing more zone teams and now we’re seeing man-to-man from the teams we’re playing but that’s what we see in practice every day and on the game field so I think we’ll be prepared for that.
The Golden Eagles may be buying what Todd Monken is selling in Hattiesburg, but it is still early on in the rebuilding stages.
Marshall has won the last three meetings between the two schools including last year’s 63-13 drubbing in which Marshall raced out to a 28-0 lead.
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