Students react to Southern Miss season opener

So another day has come and gone, and the sky still hasn't fallen after Southern Miss' 41-13 loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks. The students and fans at USM are disappointed after the defeat but are still hopeful for a successful season.

Alden Bennett, a sophomore at Southern Miss, thought that Southern Miss was going to do big things this season and was disappointed with Thursday's outcome.

"There was a lot of hype surrounding the football team," he said. "But that was just a bad performance all around on Thursday."

Alden said the Southern Miss football team is better than what they showed on Thursday, and the game only showed how good South Carolina is.

"I think that South Carolina is very good this year and I think that this could be a big year for them," he said.

Southern Miss alumnus Drew White took away the same sentiments as Bennett from Thursday night's game.

"I think that South Carolina took us completely out of our game plan and didn't allow us to do what we wanted to do," he said. "With that said, I don't think that Southern Miss played to their full potential, and I think that we will have to do better in the coming weeks."

Drew said the Golden Eagles need to tweak their offensive approach for the next game against Prairie View A&M.

"I believe that our offense needs to get more vertical," White said. "We ran a lot of horizontal plays like screens and options, and South Carolina had no trouble defending it."

Drew said if the coaches can tweak the game plan, USM should still be the favorite in Conference USA East.

"I still expect us to win the East because we have so much talent out there," White said. "We just have to get a little more tenacity out on the playing field."

Another USM student hopeful for a successful season is sophomore Seth Barron. Barron said he saw much potential in the Southern Miss defense on the first two drives but then saw the Eagles abandon their game plan.

"I was a little disappointed in how the Southern Miss defense laid down after the first two series," Barron said. "They looked really good early on, but after the first few drives they didn't look good at all."

Barron saw the Nasty Bunch mentality early on in the game, but the defense got more passive as the game went on, he said.

"I think that we need to throw a few more blitz packages in the game plan," Barron said. "When we were putting pressure on the South Carolina quarterback we were successful, but we got away from that later in the game."

Southern Miss will have a chance to get in the win column Saturday when they take on Prairie View A&M. This will be Southern Miss' first home game of the season.