Southern Miss embracing preseason doubts
Last night, the Southern Miss football team made its 20th annual preseason trip down to the Gulf Coast for what’s called Beach Bash.
As we stand today, the Golden Eagles are exactly one week from the first day of fall camp with expectations much larger than a fourth-place finish in the Conference USA west division as predicted by the league’s media.
Not a lot of respect for a USM team that was one win away from winning the west last year, better yet one quarter away, against the eventual west division champion North Texas.
In their very first conference game of the year, the Black and Gold squandered a 21-7 lead to the Mean Green who were responsible for seven out of the game’s final eight scoring plays.
That was the difference between first and third and perhaps the reason Southern Miss received just one first place vote this year. Southern Miss right tackle Paul Gainer Jr. said, “It’s really motivation. I mean, people think we’re fourth in what you say, the West? I mean, they can count us out all they want to but black hats show up, you know we’re going to show up and show out.”
Southern Miss head football Coach Jay Hopson said, “You’ve got to earn your respect. We were a quarter away last year, North Texas, we had a bad third quarter or second quarter and it cost us but hey, we’ve got to find that quarter. But hey, predictions are predictions. That’s great, I think it does motivate our football team. I think it motivates our coaches, and at the end of the day we know we’ve got to go to work. And we’ve got to get out on the field and we’re going to earn it on the field.”
To be fair, the media isn’t always wrong. Southern Miss was picked to finish third last year, fulfilling that pre-season prediction.
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