Hey y'all and welcome to the Noelcast. This is the Southern Miss preview episode. As always, the Noelcast is brought to you by Lizanna Hotzos and the Fine folks at 4 of the Table Restaurant Group. That's Madison Social, Township, Centralie, and Soto.

Make sure to check out our fine sponsors and let's get into this. So be a rather shorter episode. This is a Independence Bowl preview.

In Treesport, the game is on the 27th. Obviously this is being released that they have Christmas. Hope everybody had a great Christmas.

And you're going to have about 24 hours to listen to this, maybe 25 depending on when this gets out.

Southern Miss, an opponent that I'm guessing a lot of four-stit fans have not watched this year, but a pretty good opponent.

I mean, one of the better opponents you could get in a non-BCS type bowl this year, especially from a group of five, eight and four record.

You know, it could have been nine and three on the year to be honest. They had Kentucky beat and strongly outplayed, but Kentucky pulled it out to open the season.

Certainly I've improved a lot under Coach Hobson and after not being very good for the previous, I don't know, four or five years prior to 2016.

How good is this team? I think that's where we should start today.

I think they are in the upper half of College Football for sure. And maybe in the upper third, a top 40 level team, I think I'm comfortable saying, are they better than Miami or Clemson or

some of the better team that I've been to schedule? No, not really. Are they better than NT State or Louisville? Probably not. I don't think, but they are better than like a Syracuse or I think you're better than Wake Forest or Duke.

They're better than Florida.

This could be a test, depending on what Florida State shows up. We already know that several guys will be out and we'll talk about that as well.

Looking at this here, the line is 16 and a half. The over under is 49. So that is an implied score of 33 to 16, 33 to 16. It's interesting.

I think we'll start with with Sudden Misses defense and really the defense is what carries the Sudden Miss team. They're coached by Tony Piccaro, who is a really strong defensive coordinator.

I know we talked about him on the show before in terms of his recruiting ability and his ability to identify players early and trust himself and get offers out.

Obviously, an FSU alum and former GA at FSU as well. Looking at this, Sudden Misses is going to have multiple defense. They're going to be in a 335 and a 425 depending on if they stand up or have dare in Yancey.

They're sort of wolf defensive end, have his hand on the ground. They like to move him around. They like to present multiple fronts and they are very aggressive.

They are aggressive defense. They are attacking defense. And the numbers back that up. 18 defense efficiency. 91st in explosiveness allowed.

Looking at that, they get a lot of stops on first down. They really sell out to stop the run. They sell out for negative plays. The downside of that, they're going to leave their guys in 101 coverage quite often.

They will bust some coverage as well at times. That leads to some big plays. Also, when you have that level of aggressiveness, you can occasionally give up big runs if your run fits aren't where they're supposed to be.

I think that's by design. That's a trade off that they're willing to make to a certain extent. They're kind of rover type DB. They're linebacker slash defensive back hybrid.

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