Southern Miss football’s regular season comes to a close on Saturday, but if the cards fall right, the season could be extended with a bowl game.
The Golden Eagles have a 5-5 overall record, 4-3 in Conference USA, and six total wins qualify for a bowl game. It doesn’t guarantee a bowl, but at least a team is eligible for one.
So Saturday at 2 p.m., Southern Miss plays at UTEP (1-10, 1-6) in a game that potentially keeps the season alive.
“We're never going to put the cart in front of the horse,” USM coach Jay Hopson said. “We've got to go to work. UTEP has our utmost respect, so we know we've got to get ready to play.”
Conference USA has six bowl tie-ins, and it already has six teams that have six wins. But there have been times when C-USA teams got into non-tie-in bowls, like last year when the Eagles played in the Walk-Ons Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La.
Hopson believes his team will be ready for UTEP, despite injuries and issues on the offensive line and at quarterback.
“I think our guys are working hard,” Hopson said. “I think we're playing our best football right now, I really do. We need that to continue. That's our journey and we've got to make sure we're preparing hard to play.
Last week’s 21-20 victory over a good Louisiana Tech team gave Southern Miss its second victory in the last three weeks, and the loss was in overtime to UAB, which is the Conference USA West Division champion.
“We celebrated in the locker room after the win, but one thing we try to do is come back down to earth real quick,” Hopson said. “We know we've got another week and we've got to come out this week and prepare hard.”
Quarterback Jack Abraham returned from two games missed due to a leg injury last week. He and Tate Whatley both quarterbacked against Tech. Abraham leads the nation in pass completion percentage as he is 209 of 285 for 73.3 percent. Ian Book of Notre Dame is second at 72.6. Heisman Trophy candidates Gardner Minshew II of Washington State is fifth at 70.4 and Tua Tagovailoa of Alabama is eighth at 69.2 percent.
The USM offensive line was makeshift against Tech, although it performed well.
“For the people we’ve got healthy right now, I thought the positions we put those guys in were the best,” offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said. “We were athletic on the edge, we had Arvin (Fletcher) and Drake (Dorback) at tackle. I can’t say enough about Arvin, he’s played every position up front, which is awesome to have a guy like that. And so, to have the ability to put him out at tackle and not even lose anything, gained a lot really. If you look at the strength of Tech’s defense, it was really on the edges.
“With that, we didn’t have Trace (Clopton), so we moved Arvin out — Arvin’s been playing center — and so Grey (Best) had to step in and play center, he’d never played before. I thought he did a really good job of stepping in. We had no issues with communications, we had no issues with snaps, I thought Grey really stepped up when we needed him to. That was great to see.”
While the UTEP Miners have only a win over Rice to brag about, that might be a little deceiving.
“The crazy thing about them is they have been close to everybody,” USM defensive coordinator Tim Billings said. “Last week, it was a turnover fest and things seemed to snowball. They played North Texas to within 3 points and (Louisiana) Tech, they had first down at the 8-yard line with a minute and a half to go to win the football game and they got beat (31-24). They’re scary just because they’re 1-10. You sit here and watch them on film and say, ‘This is a pretty good football team.’”
ESPN+ will televise the game at Sun Bowl Stadium.
