The last time Marshall University played at Paulson Stadium it had one of its most shocking losses ever.

Leading 23-3 in the fourth quarter the Thundering Herd saw Georgia Southern score 21 fourth quarter points to pull out a miraculous win. The fact Marshall went on to win the Sun Belt Conference championship did little to erase the sting of that loss.

The Herd and Coach Charles Huff will be looking to gain a measure of redemption Thursday night at 8 p.m. at Paulson Stadium in a game to be televised nationally on ESPN2.

Oops. That opponent for the Eagles will not be Marshall but rather it will be Southern Mississippi, a.k.a. Marshall south.

In a strange turn of events Huff is now the head coach at Southern Miss. Not only did he leave Marshall but he took 21 players and 11 coaches and staff with him. They were part of a roster overhaul which saw 70 new players brought into the program not including 11 recruited freshmen.

Amidst this major rebuild the Golden Eagles were a pre-season pick to finish fifth in the SBC’s West Division. Early returns indicate that prediction may be off a tad.

The new look is working for the Golden Eagles (3-2, 1-0) who have already tripled last season’s win total when the once proud program went 1-11. The turnaround has been remarkable enough to have USM rated as a 3-point favorite in a hostile Paulson Stadium environment.

As a testament to the new look in today’s college football backup defensive back Brandon Tolles and seldom used wide receiver Zervian Hales are the only seniors who started their careers at Southern Miss and Hales came as a walkon.

This is the Golden Eagles’ fourth year in the SBC after a 26-year run in Conference-USA where they won four league titles, the last coming in 2011. It will be USM’s first meeting with Georgia Southern as a conference member although the schools have one previous meeting, a 70-0 win by the Golden Eagles in 1941.

Notably this will be Southern Miss’s first game in the state of Georgia since 1996 when it posted an 11-7 win over Georgia.

Huff, however, and the former Marshall players only remember their last trip to Paulson and they will be looking to atone against a struggling Georgia Southern defense.

Leading the way for the visitors is quarterback Braylon Braxton who is one of those Marshall transfers and is showing why he was the SBC’s pre-season Offensive Player of the Year.

Braxton leads the conference in touchdown passes with 11 and has thrown for 1,296 yards with three interceptions. He has completed 109 of 168 attempts for an average of 247.2 yards per game.

The Golden Eagles have six players with 10 or more catches led by Carl Chester with 14 for 224, Elijah Metcalf with 14 for 144 and Micah Davis 13 for 136 and a team high three touchdowns. Chester and Metcalf played at Marshall as did eight catch Tychaun Chapman.

Davis is a poster child for the transfer portal. Southern Miss is his fifth college. He played against Georgia Southern last year while he was at Ole Miss. He started his college career at the Air Force Academy where, after two years, he went the junior college route before going to Utah State and then transferred to Ole Miss.

Huff and his staff have done an excellent job of bringing together what amount to an entirely new team. At SBC media day the veteran coach who was 34-20 in four years at Marshall, said the focus was on flipping the script from last year’s horrible 1-11 season.

“Flip the script is not just a focus on the record, it’s a focus on mentality,” said Huff who had assistant coaching positions at Alabama under Nick Saban, at Penn State under James Franklin and at Mississippi State under Mike Leach. “It’s a focus on mentality, it’s a focus on culture. It’s a focus on everything we do.

“It’s not just on-field performance, it’s everything. It’s the discipline, the accountability, the culture. It’s the ability to sustain success when you have it whether it’s in the classroom or on the field. That’s our goal.”

So far, the plan is working. The Golden Eagles beat Appalachian State, 38-22, in their conference opener and in their last outing hammered Jacksonville State, 42-25. The Gamecocks, who pushed Georgia Southern to the limit in a 41-34 game, had to score with 23 seconds left to make the score look more respectable.

Braxton is the leading rusher with 226 yards and Jeffrey Pittman has 206. Linebackers Chris Jones (53) and Michael Montgomery (48) lead a defense which has recorded 15 sacks and has eight interceptions, two by cornerback Ian Foster.

A win over Georgia Southern would put Southern Miss in excellent position to achieve a rarity in going from being a one-win team to a bowl game. Only two other teams have done that:  South Florida and Northwestern both in 2022.