Ethan Hampton hit his already-injured throwing hand on a helmet somewhere in the first half against UConn and could not squeeze or hold a ball at halftime. He did not come back out. Landry Lyddy played the second half of a 48-20 home loss and went 14 of 25 for 194 yards with a touchdown and a pick-six, including a 56-yard strike to Mario Sanders. Blake Anderson said Lyddy "did some really, really good things" and also made "a couple of poor decisions," which is about as fair a summary of a two-hour audition as you will get.
That audition is now a job. Anderson said Southern Miss does not expect Hampton, who suffered a significant hand injury in the loss to UConn, to play at Tulane, and Lyddy is set to start, with John White and Hugh Price behind him. Kickoff at Yulman Stadium is 6 p.m. Saturday on ESPN+.
What the UConn game actually exposed
UConn was only about a three-point favorite in Hattiesburg. That matters for how you read the 48-20. Southern Miss moved the ball and still lost by 28. The defense allowed 436 yards, 213 of them rushing on 46 carries, and forced zero turnovers. Anderson put it plainly. "We've got to create turnovers, and we've got to force kicks. We didn't do that well enough at any point." He also said his team "got manhandled a little bit" and that Southern Miss is "way too prone to a turnover right now, and it's not necessarily any particular guy."
Three sacks were the defense's only real disruptive output, a decent number in isolation, meaningless when the opponent runs for 213 and never hands the ball back. And the clearest measure of the takeaway well running dry is Kobi Albert. He intercepted three passes in the opener against Alcorn State. Against UConn he played without producing a takeaway. The ball-hawking that made the first Saturday of the season fun has not shown up since.
That is the bind Lyddy inherits. Southern Miss's last two losses were decided by giveaways, and a defense that does not create any cannot pay for one. If the Golden Eagles turn it over twice again Saturday, the game is over early no matter how many yards Lyddy piles up afterward.
Why this one stings a little differently
Will Hall coaches Tulane now. Southern Miss fired him on October 20, 2024, after a 1-6 start and a 14-30 overall record. Nobody on this roster needs that explained to them, and the Bell is a real trophy that changes hands.
Here is the part worth holding onto. Southern Miss has actually won at this building. The 2022 trip to Yulman ended 27-24 over an unbeaten Tulane team that went on to win the American, with Zach Wilcke throwing two touchdown passes and Eric Scott Jr. returning an interception 35 yards for a score. Tulane's last home win in the series came in 2002. Southern Miss leads all-time 24-10.
None of that makes this a coin flip. Tulane is favored by 18.5 points, and the model gives Southern Miss about an 11% chance, largely because Southern Miss's defense ranks 116th nationally at 31.3 points allowed per game while Tulane's sits 84th at 24.0.
What to watch
The ask is simple and Southern Miss has not managed it in three weeks. Keep the game close enough that Lyddy is throwing on schedule instead of chasing points. Give Lyddy a game where the score is still one possession in the third quarter, and his arm and Sanders are good enough to make the last twenty minutes genuinely nervous for a Tulane team that has not held serve at home in this series since 2002.
Lose it 38-10 and the takeaway is that the rebuilt defense heads into Sun Belt play at Troy with nothing solved. Keep it within a touchdown, or win the Bell, and the rest of September looks like a slow start rather than a slide. That is worth an evening of your attention; nothing else on Saturday's board is.
Full numbers are in the interactive guide, and the methodology explains how the projections are built.