Landry Lyddy walked into Yulman Stadium with Ethan Hampton in street clothes and completed 18 of 29 passes for 243 yards and three touchdowns without an interception, hitting Davis Dalton once and Mario Sanders twice. Southern Miss (1-2) had gone to Tulane to face former Southern Miss head coach Will Hall.
Remember where the quarterback job started. Back in August, Blake Anderson said Lyddy, John White and Illinois transfer Ethan Hampton were all still competing and that he might not name a starter until game week. Further testing found a fracture and a 4-to-6-week absence, which rules him out here. The competition didn't get resolved; it got cleared out. What's left is Lyddy, and one game of evidence that he's the answer.
So the thing to watch Tuesday is simple and specific. The question is whether Lyddy's ball placement and decision-making survive a conference defense on the road. Tulane came after Lyddy and got nothing for it.
Southern Miss also has to finish, which it hasn't done. The Golden Eagles led Tulane 21-14 entering the fourth quarter and scored nothing after that, and Creighton Wilbanks missed from 43 and then had a 20-yarder blocked by Tulane's TJ Smith inside the final two minutes. That near-miss is the most encouraging thing this team has done, and also the reason a close game at Troy should not feel comfortable until the clock reads zero.
The defense is the harder problem. Tulane ran for 281 yards, with Maurice Turner going for 200 and two touchdowns while Landon Sylvie's interception was the unit's only takeaway. Southern Miss ranks 137th nationally against the run. If the Trojans run the ball like that, Lyddy's night won't matter much.
History is not on Southern Miss's side either. Troy beat Southern Miss 35-17 in 2023, which clinched Troy's hosting rights for the Sun Belt championship game, and 28-18 in last year's regular-season finale. Anderson isn't flinching. I've been here before. I've been 0-4 and won a championship. One-and-three doesn't scare me at all, he said, pointing back to his 2016 Arkansas State team that started winless and shared the conference title.
Treat that as context, not a forecast. The model gives Southern Miss about a 20% chance Tuesday, and the division math is thin either way. Win, and the odds of reaching the Sun Belt championship game sit near 7.3%; lose, and it falls to roughly 1%. This is not a week where the standings swing. It's a week where a fan finds out whether the quarterback they're stuck with is also the quarterback they wanted, and whether a run defense that got trampled in New Orleans can hold up against a team that has owned this matchup for five years. Those are the two things worth watching Tuesday night.
Full probabilities and the week's board are in the interactive guide, and the simulation details are in the methodology.