The Southern Miss Golden Eagles ended the 2017-18 season with the most momentum they’ve built up in a long time. With the cloud left behind from the NCAA sanctions drifting away and an upset over Conference USA’s top team, Middle Tennessee State, in the conference tournament, the program is heading in the right direction in coach Doc Sadler’s fifth season.
With success comes excitement.
“I think there are more people talking about (the basketball season) this time of year,” Sadler said. “It’s good to know maybe some people are talking about it.”
Southern Miss returns four starters this season and a quality post-player off the bench, who started a handful of games, and the starting five is loaded with seniors. Four are projected starters, too. Senior Cortez Edwards scored nearly 17 points per game last year, senior Tyree Griffin added 15 and senior Dominic Magee chipped in 12 points and seven rebounds.
The team has improved its conference win total the last few years, and that’s expected to continue this season. The players feel the pressure, but pressure is good, right?
“Pretty much all you can do is work hard and prepare yourself for the year,” Edwards said.
New scheduling format
Sadler didn’t shy away from expressing his feelings toward the new conference scheduling format. He believes Conference USA is a one-bid league in the NCAA Tournament, and the new format won’t change that.
“I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this but facts are facts in my opinion,” Sadler said. “Somebody is going to have to have a phenomenal non-conference season and win the league very convincingly for this to be a two-bid league. It’s just the way it is.”
It was reported in the summer that every conference team will play each team at least once and another team twice. That home and away opponent for Southern Miss is Louisiana Tech. After those 14 games are complete on Feb. 16, all 14 teams will be put in three groups based on where they are in the standings. The Top 5 teams are in one group, the 6-10 teams in another and the 11-14 teams in the lower group.
The teams in each group will play a five-game, round-robin type of schedule in hopes of boosting the RPI in anticipation for a bid to the NCAA Tournament. If Southern Miss is in the 1-5 group and goes 0-5 in those final games, it’ll finish no worse than fifth in the standings entering the conference tournament. A team will not be bumped out of the groups when the conference tournament begins, despite the records after the 19 total games.
“What I think that was set up for was not necessarily to get multiple teams in the tournament,” Sadler said. “It was set up to help the team that gets in the tournament to help their seeding. We’ll see if that helps.”
Sadler isn’t counting on the new format to help his team’s case, so he beefed up the non-conference schedule. Road games to Troy, SMU, Wichita State and Kansas State highlight the toughness, but there are home games against less-than-stellar competition like Milsaps and Rust College.
A home game with William Carey is also on the schedule as well, but that benefits the entire city of Hattiesburg.
There really isn’t a major problem for the players to not know when or where the final five games of the season will be, other than the seniors not being able to tell their families the date for Senior Night.
“Telling your family, ‘This is the date,’ but besides that, we’re not even looking that far,” Edwards said. “We’re just trying to get ready for the first night. I just told (my family) that I’ll keep them posted.”
Mississippi talent
Of the 15 players on the roster, seven are from Mississippi and three of the four freshman hail from the Magnolia state. Freshmen Ladarius Marshall, Tyler Stevenson and Gabe Watson are all Mississippi natives, and Sadler believes he can succeed in C-USA with an all-Mississippi team.
“I believe more than 100 percent that we could have 13 scholarships with kids from Mississippi and Mississippi junior colleges and win this league,” Sadler said. “My dream would be to have every player from Mississippi or a Mississippi junior college.”
Of the group of Mississippi newcomers, Watson averaged 27 points, nearly seven rebounds, three steals and four assists per game at St. Joseph in Madison, plus he had 10 games with at least 30 points, and he never scored less than 17 points in a contest. At New Hope, Stevenson scored 22 points per game with nine rebounds, and Marshall scored 18 points, pulled down 11 rebounds and blocked nearly five shots a game for a Forest Hill team that played for a 5A State Championship.
Veterans vs. inexperienced
With four senior starters and five more juniors on the squad, the group of freshmen could contribute to the team early. Sadler called Mitchell and Stevenson two of the most athletic players he’s seen since he’s been here, and jokingly said his team could set up a lob play to the 6-foot-7 Stevenson.
“We can at least try to lob it to him,” Sadler said. “We’ve never been able to do that.”
With the young talent, Southern Miss will rely on the leadership from Edwards and Griffin. Sadler believes those two, plus Magee and Holland, make up the best group of guards in the league, too. The confidence in the post-play is the only thing missing, and as a guard, Magee led the team in rebounds last season. Southern Miss will be in trouble if it has to rely on guards to lead the team in rebounding again, but if the time calls for it, Griffin will do whatever it takes.
“That’s not something we’re going to depend on, but if we have to go down there, we’re going to do what we have to do to win the game,” Griffin said.
Griffin said the freshmen have the talent, but they need to work on their on-court talking and communicating. Watson and Stevenson are the two best freshmen scorers, he added.
“They can shoot the ball pretty well and they play defense,” Griffin said. “What we’re working on now is them talking.”
College is a lot faster than high school, Edwards said, so the seniors are quickly trying to get the young players ready to play.
Southern Miss will be able to sign six players to next year’s signing class.
