Appalachian State (2-0, 0-0) @ Southern Miss (1-1, 0-0)
Saturday, September 13th, 2025 7:00pm EST
TV/Video: ESPN+
Radio: FLAGSHIP 97.3 FM (North Wilkesboro), 730 AM & 97.5 FM (Charlotte), 950 AM & 92.7 FM (Greensboro), 980 AM & 96.7 FM (Winston-Salem), 107.7 FM & 1450 AM (Hendersonville), 97.3 FM & 790 AM (Johnson City, TN) 87.7 FM (In-Stadium)
M. M. Roberts Stadium
Capacity: 36,000
Surface: Shaw Sports Momentum Turf
Jeff Sagarin Ratings
App State: 60.83
Southern Miss: 59.66
Home: 3.73
Southern Miss is favored by the Sagarin ratings by 2.56 points
VegasInsider Consensus: App State -1.5
Series: Southern Miss leads 2-1
Last Meeting: App State 48, Southern Miss 38, October 10, 2023, Boone, NC
It feels like we got away with one last week. Was Lindenwood ever really challenging the Mountaineers last weekend? No they were not. We hypothesized exactly about that. The game was less the opponent and more within yourself to be a little bit better, make a few less mistakes and have a better result. We all witnessed the game. We were our own opponent. The turnovers multiplied, and the points never made it to the scoreboard. The mistakes remained. So after two weeks, it’s kind of crazy to think about what this team could be with more complete games. Moving the ball is not the issue. Moving it across the goal line is an issue. Seems simple. Southern Miss is currently a more disciplined team than the Mountaineers, but they may lack in other areas that App State does not. So this is the game again, now playing on the road in an environment that the home team is trying to create. Those miscues will loom larger when the crowd cheers for your mistakes instead of going quiet. The best time to get it right, is this week.
Southern Miss bottomed out in 2024. Former coach Will Hall was on the outs, and it was a matter of time. Hall was fired after the Golden Eagles fell to 1-6 and interim coach Reed Stringer finished the season losing the last five games. Hall’s record was 14-30 in three and a half seasons. Southern Miss then pulled off one of the most underrated stories of the offseason by hiring Marshall’s Charles Huff, fresh off a conference championship. It was Marshall’s first title in ten years. In typical fashion for West Virginia politics, Marshall and Huff could not reach an agreement on a new contract. Southern Miss snagging Huff was brilliant, but also a head scratcher in many ways. Southern Miss has not been great in a long time, but they knew they had to be. In the Sun Belt, you have to be decent in two of the three major sports. Baseball is just fine in Hattiesburg, but they needed a boost. Southern Miss has had a run of head coaches that leave at the first sign of major improvement, but then couldn’t find the right fit once the successful coach left. Huff will try and break that trend just like all the others.
While the hire of Charles Huff was the major storyline, the transferring of a large swath of Marshall players to Southern Miss was the next. So many players left the Marshall program, that they could not participate in their bowl game. That’s not good for college football. The transfer portal was supposed to help the student athletes. In this case, it hurt the players that committed to Marshall. However, what we do know, is that the 2024 Marshall starting quarterback for the latter half of the season was Braylon Braxton, who is now at Southern Miss. Braxton played sparingly in the two games prior to playing App State, but got the call for Marshall, facing an Appalachian State team that was playing their first game after Hurricane Helene ravaged Watauga County. Braxton threw three touchdown passes and ran for 140 yards and two more scores on the ground. The Mountaineers gave what they had, but it wasn’t enough.
We’ve now seen two games, and the feelings leaving both exist in different parallels. I can’t be alone in the thoughts of feeling a little underwhelmed leaving on Saturday evening. All is well to dominate the stat sheet, but the only thing that matters is the scoreboard. So after another day of watching a receiver lackadaisically tote the ball toward the goal line, but not across it, I hope I never see a play like it again, by anyone. Actually I hope Georgia Southern does it. I guess we’ll rest on getting out the bad plays against the weakest teams on the schedule. Rashod Dubinion ran hard again, as he carried the ball 25 times for 194 yards, but he did fumble twice. Coach Loggains has said, we can’t give him the ball that many times, while also saying that he will continue to get the ball. It makes sense. Dubinion is a strong runner and worthy of the load. He has 306 yards on the season, which is second in FBS, but he’s also tied the most carries in FBS with 47. Perhaps he gets one more game with a lion’s share of carries before the bye week?
We have reached the third week of the season, and most of the time, some schools have played teams with varying degrees of difficulty. Southern Miss started their season with Mississippi State, an SEC school, and former #14 Jackson State of the FCS ranks. The Golden Eagles have held serve, winning the game they were supposed to while losing to a school with more resources. So that leaves them still guessing where they are, and where they might be headed after a 1-11 season. They will likely improve in 2025, but by how much? This game offers a measuring stick to their turnaround, and the entire athletic department knows it. With a kickoff at 6pm local time, it has been dubbed as a “Black Out” and social media has been abuzz about how important this game is to Southern Miss. Coach Huff was quoted in a post saying “…this is not just about winning a football game, but making a national statement of who we are.” Insert meme of young guy laying on a couch enjoying a beer from a glass bottle pointing at himself. We appreciate Coach Huff trying to turn playing App State into playing Alabama. All teasing aside, Huff gets it, even if the Mountaineers are coming off a couple less than stellar seasons. He learned what it meant to play App State when he was in Huntington, WV and he wants the same for his new employer in The Hub City. Attendance is up among alums and students, so whatever Huff is doing, its working. The newness and excitement will last as long the as results factor in, and that’s why he is playing up this game. I believe that Huff might have something up his sleeve, in a similar fashion as he did last season when gave the reins to Braylon Braxton when they played Appalachian. The Southern Miss offense has looked a little dull in their first two games. In the Miss. State game, the Golden Eagles had just three drives that spanned beyond 30 yards, and only five drives in which they ran at least 8 plays. Two of those drives resulted in touchdowns, and two drives in which they turned the ball over on downs. They enjoyed early momentum until Miss. State clamped down in the middle of the second quarter until the end of the game, when Southern Miss managed a garbage time touchdown, and another meaningless drive that ended without points. A similar script unfolded against Jackson State, where Southern Miss was able to score some points after their second and third drives, but then sputtered again in the middle of the game. They added three straight touchdown drives later on to put the game away, spanning 25 total plays for 185 yards. They were more consistent late, but didn’t really set the world on fire. All this adds up to 332 yards of offense per game, which is currently 96th in the country. It’s probably a little early for statistical ranks, but that does provide the some amount of context. Will those ranks improve? It’s possible. App State’s defense is allowing just 217 yards a game, but we all know that is also likely to go up, because the competition will. You shouldn’t expect that to stay in the same range until you see it. This is likely a very close game, and Southern Miss wants it, but it seems to me the Mountaineers have a little bit more offense than the hosts do at this point in time.
The First Pick
The Cinder Block 23
Mountaineers 31