On Saturday, September 2nd, the South Alabama Jaguars head over to Oxnard, Mississippi, to take on the Ole Miss Rebels. Kickoff inside the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium is at 7:30 P.M. ET.
Don’t tell the South Alabama Jaguars that their match-up against the bowl ineligible Ole Miss Rebels is meaningless. With the goal of playing in another bowl game, and making some noise in the Sun Belt conference, the Jaguars can’t afford to overlook Ole Miss.
The Rebels are bowl ineligible this year due to past transgressions, which makes each week an opportunity to develop talent, take some chances, have some schoolyard fun and put together a winning season for momentum into 2018. They get an opportunity to come out swinging against the Jaguars in a home contest that has the makings of a high scoring affair.
Ole Miss has been a 24 point favorite since the line first opened. Additionally, the Over/Under total of 58.5 points has also remained unchanged.
As mentioned, since Ole Miss is bowl ineligible, this game should see plenty of points as the Rebels can afford to take some chances and play loose. The offense is returning four starters along the line, which should open up holes for the ground game. However, you can bet that this offense will light it up through the air just as they did last year. In 2016, Ole Miss was 13th in the nation in passing and had a 26th ranked offense that put up 32.6 PPG.
There are opportunities for the Jaguars to score a lot of points against this Ole Miss defense, which ranked 111th overall last season and 120th against the run. Additionally, the Rebels’ defense was the third worst in the nation last year inside the Red Zone. They allowed points 94% of the time an opponent got inside their 20 yard line.
As long as South Alabama’s quarterback Dallas Davis can keep the turnovers down, hit a solid percentage of his passes and find the talented running back Xavier Johnson in open space, the Jaguars can keep pace scoring with Ole Miss for at least the first half. And, that’s all we need out of them for this game.
The Over is 9-2 in the Jaguars last 11 non-conference games. For the Rebels, the Over is 4-0 in their last 4 home games and 5-1 in their last 6 games against the Sun Belt conference.
In the 3 games that Ole Miss played against non-Power 5 conference opponents last year, they gave up an average of nearly 23 points per game. All three of those games were at home too. The Rebels also scored 37 points per game at home in 2016.
With a defense that returns many starters from its terrible 2016 squad, and no post-season opportunities, Ole Miss will most likely experience more shootouts than shutouts. Count this game as one of those shootouts. Look for both teams to exceed their PPG from last year (Old Miss at 32.6 PPG and South Alabama at 25.4 PPG) and hit the Over.