The Golden Eagles came into Saturday afternoon’s matchup against Texas State with a clear goal in mind: Win this one, then beat South Alabama next week, and they’d lock up the Sun Belt West Division before even getting to that final game of the season against Troy.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned, as Southern Miss got trounced by Texas State at The Rock by the final score of 41-14. USM starting QB Braylon Braxton didn’t play in this one due to a knee sprain. Head Coach Charles Huff said that Braxton could’ve played if absolutely necessary, but since he wasn’t near 100% in practice during the week, they decided to be cautious with him.
Even if Braxton had played, though, the final result likely wouldn’t have been any different given how the Golden Eagles’ defense played in this one. Coming off a six-turnover performance in a massive road win over Arkansas State last weekend, the Nasty Bunch wasn’t quite as nasty against Texas State, giving up over 250 rushing yards and failing to force a turnover. The Bobcats won this game in the trenches, and Coach Huff took the blame for his team looking unprepared in the moment.
“Hats off to Texas State. [They] probably played their cleanest game they played all year,” Huff said. “They didn’t turn the ball over. We have kind of lived and died by the turnover in waves. We didn’t do that today, and you can’t give the best offense in the league the ball three more times.”
“I told [the team] it’s on me,” Huff said of the Golden Eagles suffering their worst loss of the season.
“Don’t point the finger at each other. It’s my fault. All of the things that happened today showed up at some point in our preparation. Maybe not this week, but maybe last week. We’ve been living in this 10-12 penalty world for the last few weeks, and we’ve gotten away with it. We’ve been living in this two-or-one turnover world on offense for the past two or three weeks, and we’ve gotten away with it because our defense comes up with four. … I told them, it catches up to you when it catches up to you.”
On this episode of Nasty Bunch & Beyond, we discuss all the things that went wrong in the lopsided loss while also acknowledging that everything this team wants to accomplish is still right there for the taking.
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