Marshall (2-1, 0-0) at Southern Miss (2-1, 0-0)
Thursday’s line: Southern Miss -7
First meeting: 2005 in Huntington
Last meeting: 2007 in Huntington (USM won 33-24)
Southern Miss leads the series 3-0
Last week: USM def. Arkansas St. 27-24; MU def. Memphis 17-16
With Marshall falling on hard times right around the time they joined Conference USA, and Southern Miss suffering something of a slide of its own in recent years, some of the anticipated luster has faded on this young conference rivalry between two of the more respected programs outside of the BCS automatic qualifier conference pool. The games themselves, however, have lived up the billing for the most part, as the first meeting resulted in USM hanging on for an overtime win, and last year’s contest featured a furious Marshall comeback that put a scare into the hearts of Golden Eagle fans everywhere. Only the 2006 meeting, a 42-7 thumping of the Herd in Hattiesburg featured a runaway. Will the 2008 edition be another tight one, or will one of these programs—both seemingly on the rise—make a statement? As the teams mirror each other in a lot of ways, it could go any number of directions.
Marshall’s offense, much like Southern Miss’, features a workhorse running back in Darius Marshall, and a go-to tight end in Cody Slate. Marshall (the player), made the CUSA All-Freshman team in 2007 after posting 631 yards and an average of 5.1 per carry. In 2008, he’s picked up right where he left off, currently ranking 23rd in the FBS and 2nd in CUSA (only to Southern Miss’ own Damion Fletcher) in rushing yards per game at a hair under 102. In Slate, Marshall (the school) has a counterpart to Southern Miss’ Shawn Nelson: a tall tight end with speed and good hands. Slate has missed the past two games to a knee injury but will play Saturday. The two players’ stats over the past few years are eerily similar, but it’s worth noting—as Marshall Coach Mark Snyder recently did—that Nelson is a considerably bigger factor in USM’s offense these days than has been in the past.
The pilot of Marshall offense is redshirt freshman quarterback Mark Cann, who delivered an otherwise pretty good effort (20 for 39, 211 yards) marred by 2 interceptions in his second game, a blowout at the hands of Wisconsin and a cleaner one (14 for 28, 224 yards, 1 TD, no INTs) in a close win vs. Memphis. Cann and the rest of the backfield operate behind a fairly experienced (3 returning starters out of 5) but not wholly aged (2 seniors and a sophomore among those 3) line that amazingly has yet to allow a sack in 2008.
The Herd’s defense is centered around junior outside linebacker Albert McClellan, who was named CUSA Defensive Player of the Year in 2006, and is back in ’08 after missing ’07 due to injury. McClellan has 2 sacks in the young season. Other players to watch include senior inside linebacker Maurice Kitchens, who leads the team in total tackles with 26 including 1 sack, and senior free safety C.J. Spillman, who leads the team in solo tackles with 11. As a unit, Marshall’s defense is pretty average (55th in the FBS) against the run, yielding 117 yards per game, but rather atrocious (112th) against the pass, allowing nearly 309 yards per game (and that’s not skewed by the Wisconsin blowout; they gave up a whopping 368 to Memphis). As with most units at this point in the season, it’s tough to read a pattern from the game-by-game sample since, as was alluded to previously, the schedule so far has included not only a 51-14 blowout at the hands of a Top 15 Wisconsin and a low-scoring 17-16 squeaker over Memphis, but also an obligatory alumni-assuring home pounding of a lower-division opponent.
On paper (or an electronic analog thereof), this should be a good one. You’ve got two teams with similar offenses still in the early stages of finding themselves, and on top of that, in many places on the roster, each team has a counterpart to the other’s key player. In the end, though, Southern Miss’ multiple offensive weapons will probably prove too much for Marshall’s heretofore generous defense. The only question is how much can the Golden Eagles’ young defense slow down Marshall (currently the winningest FBS team in West Virginia, by the way, much to the chagrin of my WVU-alum spouse) when they have the ball? There will probably be some scary moments in this one, but I doubt it’ll be quite the nail-biter we saw (or heard, no thanks to our supposed “play-by-play” announcer) last week at Arkansas State.
