Struggling Southern Miss can’t stop Arkansas State, or losing streak from reaching five

Southern Miss hasn’t won a pre-November FBS game since the 2022 season and it’ll have to wait another week to try again.

The Golden Eagles (1-6, 0-3) were slashed through by Sun Belt West rival Arkansas State (4-3, 2-1) on homecoming, 44-28, giving USM its fifth straight loss and third 1-6 start in four years under Will Hall.

“Another chapter of the same book,” Hall said after the game. “Just really disappointed we weren’t able to pull it out.”

The Red Wolves scored touchdowns on each of their first three possessions on the way to putting up season highs in points, rushing yards and total offense.

Ethan Crawford made his second start at quarterback and led three long scoring drives in the first half that all ended in rushing touchdowns by different Golden Eagles — including Crawford and true freshman Jalen Washington’s first career score.

Two third quarter turnovers put USM behind in the race against Jaylen Raynor and an ASU running game that carved 281 yards through the Eagles’ defense. Raynor threw three touchdown passes and Ja’Quez Cross picked up 127 ground yards.

Crawford threw for 187 yards and ran for a career-high 85 yards and two touchdowns for USM. The sophomore led an offense that ran the ball effectively, but was subject to 6 sacks and 11 tackles for loss.

A mishandled exchange on a jet sweep led to a tip-drill interception and evasive maneuvers resulted in Crawford fumbling. The two turnovers both resulted in Red Wolves field goals.

“We are in a rut and it is hard,” Hall said. “And life is hard, sometimes. We’ve been through a lot of hard here. But nothing in life has been made better by not doing what you know is right. We need to come back and address these issues on film and fix them. We need to keep growing with our young players.”

Sun Belt fodder

In a league Hall expected his Golden Eagles to compete in, USM continues to serve as a tune-up for its division rivals.

Southern Miss has allowed each of its last two opponents to double their season average for scoring and set team-bests in numerous offensive categories.

Arkansas State became the fourth team in the last five games to run for over 200 yards against USM, scored its first two rushing touchdowns since Week 2 and topped its previous game-high for rushing by over 100 yards.

“I just feel like they out-schemed us,” defensive lineman Chris Jones said. “They had a game plan and it worked. I really don’t think it was an effort thing. We played our butts off. We ran to the ball, we tried to make plays. I just feel like we got out-schemed.”

The 18 rushing touchdowns allowed by USM is most in the SBC. The Eagles are allowing 7.7 runs of 10-plus yards per game and 5.8 yards a carry on 3rd-and-short situations.

Arkansas State was able to take advantage and open up its offense against USM in a way that it had not been able to do against previous opponents, including FCS Central Arkansas.

“We’ll have to look at our plan, we’ll have to look at the execution of the plan,” Hall said. “The difference in the game was their ability to run the football like that.”

Losing at halftime

The halftime locker room has been a hinge point where USM has consistently lost the adjustment battle.

The Golden Eagles were outscored 16-7 in the second half by the Red Wolves and are now being outscored 97-25 over the final two quarters against FBS competition. Southern Miss has lost every second half against FBS opponents and is averaging just 4.2 second-half points over those six games.

Southern Miss converted its first second half third downs versus FBS this season against ASU after starting 0-18, but turned the ball over three times and had critical penalties wipe away big plays.

“Converting on third downs, turnovers and playing from behind makes it a little tougher,” Hall said. “We’ve got to score more in the second half. We only scored seven tonight.”

The struggles led to a breaking point for fans in attendance as brown paper bags were spotted in the student section, “Fire Will Hall” chants broke out from the crowd and custom shirts were worn emblazoned with the same message.

The players are aware of the mounting frustration and the repeated execution issues plaguing the team.

“We got to change something,” Jones said. “We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. That’s in life and that’s in everything. We just have to keep working on trying to change something. You keep doing the same things and it’s not going to work.”

Southern Miss is back on the road next week to face James Madison. That game is set to kick at 2:30 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN+.