Southern Miss head football coach Will Hall addressed the media after practice on Tuesday, Sept. 3, at M.M. Roberts Stadium. Hall reflected on the Golden Eagles’ previous game against Kentucky and looked ahead to their 2024 home opener against the Southeastern Lions.
The Golden Eagles (0-1) will host the Southeastern Lions (0-2) on Saturday, Sept. 7, at The Rock. Kickoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. CT and the game will be streamed on ESPN+ with commentary by Jason Baker and Austin Davis. Fans can also tune in to the radio broadcast featuring John Cox and Lee Roberts on Rock 104.5, Southern Miss’ flagship station, or through an affiliate of the Southern Miss Sports Network. More information can be found at SouthernMiss.com.
Fans interested in attending Saturday’s game or purchasing tickets for upcoming home games can do so by calling 1-800-844-TICK (8425), visiting SouthernMissTickets.com, or going to the Ticket Office at the Pat Ferlise Center, located at the corner of West 4th Street and Golden Eagle Avenue.
Here is what Hall said to the media:
Opening Statement…
“[It was a] beautiful day, we thank the Good Lord for that. What a practice. Great energy and enthusiasm. The guys are really looking forward to being back home and getting back out there and playing and executing better than we showed last week. Like I said, I really thought our effort was unbelievable. We went there to win. From the opening flea flicker all the way to the fake punt, we were doing everything we could to win the game. And we were playing so daggum hard that we were out of control at times. We wanted to win that game so bad that we were just out of control. We’ve got to rein and harness that energy in and execute better, and that’s been the big point of emphasis this week. We’ve got to take that energy and competitive nature and how bad we wanted to go to Kentucky and win that game as a program and harness it down a little bit and think a little better and execute better. The good thing is you can fix that. You can’t, sometimes you know if you don’t have enough talent, if you don’t have enough effort and intensity, those can be issues. We’ve got talent. We’ve got effort and intensity. We’ve just got to play better and clean some things up. We took a great step towards that today.”
On Southern Miss’ tackling against Kentucky…
“I thought early on we tackled really well. We were hitting, I’m talking about hitting. You saw it Glyn. Then we got tired. We got tired, we went three-and-out three consecutive times in a row. That’s why we faked the punt, we knew we were a little bit tired there and then we missed some tackles late that we were making earlier. That’s obviously something that we’ve got to continue to work on, but for [our] first game versus a great opponent I thought we were running and hitting early on. We’ve got to do a little bit better when we’re tired right there.”
On Southeastern’s tape against Tulane…
“So Southeastern, this conference and this level and these teams really gave the Sun Belt a lot of trouble. [With] Southeastern, LA Tech’s beaten them 45-42 in the past three years. South Alabama was 7-7 at halftime and 21-7 going into the fourth quarter. [Louisiana] beat them 24-7 two years ago. Central [Arkansas] played Arkansas State to the wire last week. Lamar played Texas State to a one-score game, so there’s been a lot of close games within our conference. We certainly know Southeastern’s got good players. [Southeastern head coach Frank Sceflo] is a proven coach. That Tulane game last week, it was 14-to-nothing and they were in the red zone about to score to make it 14-to-3 or 14-to-7 at the half and they threw a 99-yard pick six. That’s what really flipped that game. Their game was a lot like ours with Kentucky. It was much closer than what the score said, so we’ve got to continue – but the focus on us this week is taking that energy and passion and honing it in from the time the play is called to the time the play is snapped, we’re playing [with] better execution.”
On cleaning up mistakes heading into week two…
“For us, a lot of things we didn’t get to do in that game. We only had 33 snaps offensively. We really just played like half a football [game]. We wanted to involve Chandler Pittman more and Ethan Crawford more and Larry Simmons more. There’s a lot of things that we were on our way to doing. You only get 70 snaps in a game, we weren’t even at the halfway mark. So, there’s a lot of things we didn’t get to do that we’re excited about doing. Then as far as executing better, I think it’s just a mindset and a thought process. Our team, we went up there, everybody in our program from the head coach all the way through to the managers went up there to win and we laid it on the line and spilt everything we had. We’ve just got to control that a little better and harness that in. There’s a lot of elements of waiting so long to play that built anxiety, built anxiety, built anxiety that maybe that had something to with it, I don’t know. We’ll do better job of managing that if it ever comes along again. Our players know, they saw the tape. They watched this tape yesterday and had even more confidence because of the way they played in that environment. They know they can win one-on-ones, they’ve just got to correct the things they can correct. We can calm down and execute the assignment better. We’re certainly going to.”
On reining in emotions to focus on the next play…
“We want to have an edge though, Glyn. We want to be the Nasty Bunch. We want to be nice guys Sunday through Friday, but we don’t want to be nice on Saturday. We’re building that edge back, we’ve got the talent to do that again. We can’t get 15-yard penalties, which we had one. That was foolish on the goal line, but outside of that, that was the only one. We want to play with an edge and we want to play physical. We want people to know that they’ve played us when the game is over.”
On graduate offensive lineman Dontae Lucas (Overton, Fla. / South Alabama)…
“He did some good things. [There’s] some things he’s got to do better two. Like I’ve said, he played extremely hard like all our guys did. Assignment wise, as a group we’ve just got to calm down and play better and that’s what we’re focused on.”
On locker room mentality heading into Saturday…
“We’ve got a good football team. We’ve got to fix the things we can fix. We can control what we can control and we can certainly do that and we feel like we’ve got a chance to get on a roll and make a run at this thing, but we’ve got to take it one week at a time. Right now, the focus is on improving each day on what we can control and right now for us collectively that’s getting the signal, thinking about our assignment and executing our assignment with controlled rage and aggression.”
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