Gritty, Battle-Tested Southern Miss Prepares for Sun Belt Conference Tournament

With the Sun Belt Conference tournament about to begin for the Golden Eagles, head coach Jay Ladner believes his "gritty" team could have some advantages in the early rounds.

Southern Miss head coach Jay Ladner reacts to a play between Jackson State forward Devin Ree (4) and Southern Miss guard Isaac Taveras (10) during an exhibition men’s college basketball game between Jackson State and Southern Miss at Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center in Jackson, Miss., on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. Southern Miss defeated Jackson State 81-71. / Ayrton Breckenridge/Clarion Ledger / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

HATTIESBURG, Miss – When basketball season started back in November, Southern Miss head coach Jay Ladner knew it would take some time for his team to build chemistry, given that the roster was full of players who had never played with each other before.After getting off to a 1-3 start, that chemistry started to build, as the Golden Eagles won six of their next eight games from Nov. 18 to Dec. 18. However, less than two weeks later, junior guard Isaac Taveras, who was the team's leading scorer at the time, went down with a wrist injury that sidelined him until early February.

Due to early chemistry growing pains and the significant injury to Taveras, the Golden Eagles, despite finishing above .500 with a 16-15 overall record, didn't have the regular season they had hoped for. However, given where Southern Miss was slated in the Sun Belt Conference preseason rankings, one could argue that the team ended up doing better than expected. After his team finished up practice at Reed Green Coliseum on Monday, Coach Ladner took some time to talk with Southern Miss Golden Eagles On SI, recapping the regular season that was just completed and previewing what should be a fun Sun Belt Conference tournament.

Eags Finish Regular Season as Only Division I Mississippi Team with Winning Record

Djahi Binet throws down a dunk at Reed Green Coliseum. / Joe Harper/bgnphoto.com

Of the Golden Eagles' 15 regular-season losses, 11 of them were decided by single digits, including three of the first four games of the season at Buffalo, South Carolina and Grambling.

“Of course, you look back at the start of the season,” Ladner said of his team letting some close games slip away in the early stages of the season. “The coaches and I were doing that on the way home from Mobile the other night as we wrapped up a winning season. And we're so proud of that.

"(Just having a winning season) is, of course, not what our expectation is, but one of the coaches mentioned that we're the only Division I team of the six in Mississippi that has a winning season. So I know that it may not necessarily be the bar that all of us want, but it is something. One of our goals, and it's a minimal goal, but one of our goals, of course, during the preseason is to have a winning season.”

The Golden Eagles were at their best at home, as they got 10 of their 16 wins at Reed Green Coliseum. However, two of their wins came in the Pensacola Invitational in late November, as they won that in-season tournament in the same arena they'll be playing the Sun Belt tournament in later this week. So, perhaps Southern Miss can rekindle some of those good feelings as it makes its way back to Pensacola.

'Gritty' Eags Healthy and Playing Their Best Basketball Heading Into Sun Belt Tournament

Southern Miss star Tylik Weeks continued his scoring dominance against South Alabama on Friday night. / @SouthernMissMBB

 “What I'm most proud of about this team is they've got some grit about 'em. I always say they’ve got some ‘hombre’ about 'em. They’ve got some toughness,” Ladner said of his team’s style of play. “And I don't mean that in a bad way, but they're competitive. They haven't let a few close losses get 'em down. They continue to fight every game. And to be honest with you, we have finished probably playing as good a basketball as we've played all year, over the last three weeks.”

Losing Taveras for an extended period of time earlier this season was a tough blow for the Golden Eagles, but he should be 100 percent for the upcoming conferecne tournament according to Coach Ladner.

“When Taveras went out, that was a huge blow for us," Ladner said. "Explosive player that has the ability to change games, and to lose him for eight and a half, nine weeks. And then another thing people may have a hard time understanding, when a player's been out eight or nine weeks in the type of injury that he had with a broken wrist where you can't dribble, shoot, anything like that… It's hard just to get right. You're not gonna be the same guy. It takes a little time. So, it's taken several weeks for him to regain his strength, his flexibility and so forth.”

For a handful of games recently, Southern Miss has also been without sophomore guard Brewer Carruth, who Coach Ladner identifies as the team's best perimeter defender. However, like Taveras, Carruth will also be back and at full strength for the Sun Belt tournament.

“We've been without our best defender, Brewer Carruth," Ladner said. "He is our best perimeter defender. He's physical, he is tough. He's been out with a high ankle sprain. Yep. And so we were able to kind of survive this stretch without him. He's, he's ready to go now. He's a hundred percent."

'You Gotta Believe!'

@SouthernMissMBB

 "I'll tell you this, my time at Jones Junior College served me well. We won the national championship at Jones Junior College (in 2014), and we had to win five games in five days," Ladner said of his Golden Eagles now needing to win five games in five days in order to win the Sun Belt tournament, which can be a real war of attrition based on how the bracket is formatted. "I know people out there say it can't be done. ... But if you have the right guys and they got the right stuff about 'em, you can do it."

When the Golden Eagles take the court in Pensacola for warm-ups, they'll be wearing shirts that say "Ya Gotta Believe!" on the front.

"A couple of games ago, we changed our pre-game warmup top to 'Ya Gotta Believe,' and that's what we mean. You gotta believe. You truly have to believe," Ladner said. "We told our guys, 'everybody in this coliseum may not believe, but I'm telling you, the guys in this circle, if you believe, we can get this thing done.' So that's kind of been our rallying cry."

On the back of those warm-up shirts is the number 13, a simple message with greater meaning. During the Sun Belt preseason polls, which Sun Belt coaches vote on, Southern Miss was predicted to finish 13th out of the 14 teams in the conference. The Golden Eagles ended up doing quite a bit better than that, finishing in eighth place at the end of the regular season, but they're still going to use that preseason prediction as added motivation for the conference tournament.

" I wanted to remind our players, and of course, I didn't need to remind them, they already knew ... but the guy that's sitting opposite our bench most likely voted us 13th or 14th," Ladner said. "We can't vote for ourselves, so there weren't too many higher votes than that to finish 13th."

Collective Effort Needed for Sun Belt Tournament Gauntlet

“I do feel like that we're playing our best basketball that we played all year, and I think that we can still get better," Ladner said. "I think we have to continue to manage our turnovers. We've gotta do a better job there, but our defense is probably playing as well as we played all year. We're rebounding the basketball on both ends, offensive end defensive glass. The chemistry of the team is much better.”

In the regular-season finale, Southern Miss got a massive upset road win over South Alabama, a team that was No. 2 in the Sun Belt at the time. One big reason the Golden Eagles were able to get that win and secure a winning record was the play of sophomore guard Chiante' Tramble, who scored a career-high 18 points in 16 minutes off the bench. Coach Ladner knows he'll need some more performances like that from Tramble and others, including Carruth, Dylan Brumfield, Tegra Izay, Curt Lewis, Izzy Hart, and more, if his team is going to make some real noise at the Sun Belt Conference tournament.

"If we're gonna make a run, we're gonna have to have great depth," Ladner said.  “Our goal was to win the league (in the regular season), but that's okay. Our major goal is still sitting there, and that's to get to the NCAA tournament. … We're a one-bid league, so we've gotta win this tournament coming up this week. I like the way we're trending.”

You can watch the entire interview with Coach Ladner below on the Nasty Bunch & Beyond YouTube channel, or you can listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Stay tuned to Southern Miss Golden Eagles On SI for more basketball coverage later this week as the guys try to make a deep run in Pensacola.