Inside Southern Miss football signing Sun Belt's top recruiting class after 3-9 season

HATTIESBURG – The 25 days leading up to the start of the early signing period are some of the busiest in the college football calendar between high school recruiting, the transfer portal and the coaching carousel.

Southern Miss football coach Will Hall said on one of those nights his wife, Rebecca, grabbed his phone and the two of them took a peek at how much time he’d spent that day on his phone. The numbers were staggering: 114 phone calls and text messages with 79 different people.

Sure, every coach across the country is working their tails off at this time. But for it all to pay off, like it appears to have with Southern Miss signing the top recruiting class in the Sun Belt Conference, then it actually means something.

“It's been the most productive 25 days of my life I think with this signing class and then also the coaching changes we've been able to do with our staff,” Hall said on a Zoom call Wednesday with reporters.

After what the Golden Eagles (3-9) went through this season, it wouldn’t have been shocking to see the 2024 recruiting class fall apart. There are plenty of programs across the country where that probably would’ve happened. Outside of a few late swaps that happen every year, Southern Miss’ recruiting class stuck together.

And consider this: Twelve of the 14 Sun Belt teams qualified for a bowl game this season. Southern Miss and Louisiana-Monroe are the only two that didn’t.

ULM, who underwent a coaching change, has its class ranked 13th in the conference, per the 247Sports Composite rankings. Only Georgia State is behind by a hair.

Meanwhile, the Golden Eagles are at the mountaintop with the Sun Belt’s best class, 74th nationally.

“I think to do that speaks volumes of a lot of things that have been talked about,” Hall said. “No. 1, our culture and the way we treat our own players. Our own players really help in recruiting. The reputation we have built around the southeast through many years of how we're going to treat their players when they come here obviously has shown out too.

“To be able to sign a class like this again under the circumstances we were under, just speaks volumes of our coaching staff and also how we built this place up.”

Driving the top of Southern Miss’ 25-signed players in its recruiting class is the defense. The four highest-rated players are all on that side of the ball. In fact, the top-three are all defensive lineman, beginning with Oak Grove’s three-star Caleb Moore, followed by Grenada’s Aaron Travis and Flomaton, Alabama’s Miles Adams.

Southern Miss director of player personnel Joe Moreno said on the program’s live TV show that he lost a little bit of sleep Tuesday night thinking about the possibility of another team plucking Adams away from Southern Miss.

Plus, there weren’t many surprises that oftentimes happen on signing day.

Perhaps the most notable one was three-star Hattiesburg offensive lineman Elijah Baker flipping to Tulane. But, Southern Miss signed four offensive linemen and added a fifth, Eastern Michigan’s Zack Conti, through the transfer portal.

Hall is particularly high on Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College offensive tackle Greg Nunnery.

“We thought Greg Nunnery was the best O-linemen in the Mississippi jucos,” Hall said. “To be able to hold on to him and keep him through a lot of highly-recruited contest on him was big.”

Hall and Moreno have proved they can recruit at a high level in the Group of Five.

Now comes the most important challenge: Turning it into wins on Saturday’s.

“A lot of work to be done, but proud of what we've done from a foundational standpoint,” Hall said. “We got to win. We know that and now it's time to do that.”

TRANSFER TRACKER: Southern Miss football transfer portal tracker: Who is joining, leaving via portal

Southern Miss football odds and ends

• Southern Miss will have five early enrollees: Caleb Moore, John White, Jalen Owens, Jalen Washington and Damion Miller. Zay Lowery might be a sixth, but that wasn't finalized as of Wednesday.

• Southern Miss has picked its new defensive line coach but is waiting to announce it "out of respect from where they are coming from."

• New defensive coordinator Clay Bignell has already joined the team, while new offensive coordinator Chip Long will arrive in Hattiesburg after Louisville's bowl game.

• Southern Miss is still looking to add a linebacker, wide receiver and possibly a transfer quarterback.

Sam Sklar is the Southern Miss beat reporter for the Hattiesburg American. Email him at ssklar@hattiesb.gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: How Southern Miss football signed Sun Belt's top recruiting class