UConn football takes to Southern Miss for first road game under Jason Candle: How…
UConn · Southern Miss · Ole MissAll eyes will be on the state of Mississippi this college football Saturday. Coach Lane Kiffin will be making his much-anticipated return to Oxford after leaving Ole Miss for LSU while on the verge of a College Football Playoff appearance last season.
It is one of the the biggest games of the year thus far; a top-10 matchup with plenty of emotion involved. And kicking off a half hour earlier, ...
There won't be any bad blood – it is the first time the teams have ever met – but there are still plenty of connections between the programs, which both opened their respective seasons under new head coaches with a dominant FCS win, followed by a lopsided power conference loss. Southern Miss , which plays out of the Sun Belt Conference, opened with a 49-3 win over Alcorn State and followed with a 48-3 loss to Auburn.
Candle is also familiar with Southern Miss defensive coordinator Joe Bolden, who he'll be calling plays against, as Bolden's brother, Dan, played linebacker at Toledo and worked with the Rockets as a graduate assistant last season. Dan Bolden is now a defensive analyst at Syracuse and will visit UConn with the Orange on Oct. 3.
KEY POINTS
- UConn football takes to Southern Miss for first road game under Jason Candle: How to watch.
- And kicking off a half hour earlier, 250 miles south, UConn will take on Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg heat for its first road game under coach Jason Candle .
- Blake Anderson , the Golden Eagles ' head coach, beat UConn twice while he was leading Utah State, first in the first game of the Jim Mora era in 2022 and then a stunner at The Rent in 2023, when the Huskies lost on a last-minute blocked extra point .
- His history against Candle goes back to his six-year stint at Arkansas State (2014-2020), when he lost all three matchups against Toledo ; the first two with Candle as offensive coordinator and the third after he took over as head coach.