HATTIESBURG, Miss. — When Southern Mississippi’s Ito Smith broke loose for a 40-yard touchdown run with 4:23 left, Marshall defenders didn’t come close to running him down.
It’s not that the Thundering Herd defense is slow. It surely didn’t look slow when it held the Golden Eagles at 10 points for nearly 33 minutes.
The problem? Perhaps it’s that Smith’s run came on Southern Miss’ 79th of 85 offensive plays. That came on a late-October game in the Deep South where the game-time temperature was 83.
It was a tough combination for the Herd defense: warm night, uptempo attack and next to no help from the MU offense.