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terryW · 08-19-2009 12:06 PM

Young Southern Miss team embraces expectations

August 18, 2009 4:57 PM

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- Larry Fedora doesn't remember a light bulb going on over the heads of his Southern Miss players in the middle of last season.

There was no grand epiphany; the team didn't go on a spirit walk.

There's nothing he can pinpoint to explain what happened to his team after it started the season 2-6 and then rallied to win its final five games, including the New Orleans Bowl against Sun Belt Conference champion Troy.

It just sort of happened.

"That's something that was so frustrating, those kids were practicing hard, they were buying in to everything we were telling them, even when we were losing," Fedora said. "On Sunday nights, we were coming out there for practice and there wasn't any head hanging. It was, 'Let's go, let's get after it,' the same way they did the Sunday before and the Sunday before that .... They just stuck in there, kept believing and some young kids started growing up."

Southern Miss had 13 freshmen and sophomores in their two-deep last season, including freshmen at quarterback and their top receiver spot. And it took a while for those players to adjust to the speed of the college game, and for the entire team to adjust to a new coaching staff and a new system.

But the Golden Eagles never stopped working and eventually the momentum that caused them to lose five straight from Sept. 20 to Oct. 25 swung to a five-game winning streak to end the season.

That swing has the Golden Eagles projected as one of the top teams in Conference USA heading into the 2009 season.

"If you take this fall camp compared to last fall camp, you see a completely different team," quarterback Austin Davis said. "If you went back and watched the first 10 days of camp last year, mentally there was so much on us because we had to learn so much in a short amount of time. This camp, we said we wanted to pick up where we left off against Troy in the New Orleans Bowl. We don't want to go backwards."

From the moment offseason conditioning began, Southern Miss continued to move forward behind the leadership of players such as Davis. Fedora saw it in spring football and it's carried over to fall camp.

After 15 winning seasons, the drive to be successful is something that's engrained in Southern Miss.

"One thing around this place, the tradition here of always winning, that's part of the reason why these kids come here, they expect to win," Fedora said. "They expect our fans to expect us to win. Those expectations are out there. I don't think there's going to be a time when they step on the field and they say it's going to be OK if we don't win this game. That's not the way they look at it."

An informal media poll conducted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune had Southern Miss coming in second in Conference USA East behind East Carolina, but four of the 24 voters picked the Golden Eagles to win the East and two picked them to win the conference outright.

Fedora said he's not worried about his young team buckling under the pressure and embraces the expectations that have been levied against Southern Miss. He's stressed to his team that the history of Southern Miss is a winning history and that this team isn't going to change that.

"I'd love to be the No. 1 team going into every year because I want the target to be on our back. It makes no difference," Davis said. "That's what we should shoot for. We shouldn't shy away from the expectations. I want the expectations, and I think a lot of the guys want them because it's Southern Miss. That's why you come play football at Southern Miss because you know you're going to come play for a good football team. You know you're going to play other good football teams. And you know you're going to compete for a conference championship and be expected to win."

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/ncfnation/0-1...tions.html

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