When Southern Miss steps onto the soccer pitch Thursday night in Montgomery against Alabama State, it will be more than the first match of the 2026 season. It will be the beginning of the Danny Owens era, the first chapter of a rebuild led by one of the most successful soccer coaches Mississippi has produced.
And after the way 2025 ended, a fresh start might be exactly what Southern Miss needs.
The Golden Eagles finished last season 2-14-1 overall and 1-9 in Sun Belt Conference play. Southern Miss scored only 12 goals in 17 matches while allowing 59, missing the eight-team Sun Belt Tournament altogether.
Rather than making small adjustments, Southern Miss changed direction. Danny Owens was hired in December after spending 21 seasons building William Carey into one of the premier women’s soccer programs in the NAIA. Owens went 358-72-19 with the Crusaders, recorded 19 winning seasons, won 13 regular-season conference championships and 12 conference tournament titles and led Carey to the 2018 NAIA national championship. His teams reached four national championship matches and six Final Fours.
Now he gets his first opportunity to try to build something similar a few miles across Hattiesburg.
Calling 2026 a transition year almost undersells it. Owens said when Southern Miss released its schedule that 19 new players would join the Golden Eagles for his first season. He also described the spring as an opportunity to introduce a new way of operating the program.
That means Southern Miss could look dramatically different from the team that walked off the field following a 5-0 loss at Marshall last October. Owens also brought a familiar piece of his William Carey operation with him. Associate head coach Ryan Weir spent 11 seasons on Owens’s staff at Carey. During that stretch, the Crusaders went 213-26-9 and won the 2018 national championship.
Associate head coach Ryan Weir spent 11 seasons on Owens’s staff at Carey. During that stretch, the Crusaders went 213-26-9 and won the 2018 national championship. This isn’t Southern Miss hiring a successful coach and asking him to recreate everything from scratch. Owens brought part of the infrastructure that helped make his previous program successful.
The 2026 roster reflects that change. Southern Miss has added players from multiple levels and backgrounds, including transfers Argentina Estrada, Alessia Navarro and Ella Jefcoat from William Carey. The Golden Eagles’ current roster also includes players from Germany, Denmark, Scotland, Japan, Spain, Venezuela, Brazil, Poland, Mexico and throughout the United States.
For Owens, the challenge may be less about talent than how quickly all of those pieces become a team.
With so much turnover, one of the most important pieces of continuity is graduate midfielder Ryan Smith. The Biloxi native led Southern Miss with three goals and six points last season despite appearing in only 13 matches. Smith scored against UAB and Jackson State before delivering the game-winner in Southern Miss’s 1-0 victory over Louisiana Tech.
She is back on the 2026 roster and gives Owens an experienced player who has already produced at the Division I level. Southern Miss will need her.
The Golden Eagles averaged only 0.71 goals per match last season and were shut out six times. Their 130 shots were less than half the 276 attempted by opponents. Finding consistent scoring has to be one of the first priorities of the new staff. Smith doesn’t have to carry the offense by herself, but having last season’s leading scorer back is a useful starting point.
Another returning player worth watching is junior forward Lorilee Taylor. Taylor didn’t score in 2025, but she led Southern Miss with two assists. One came on Smith’s game-winning goal against Louisiana Tech, while another helped create Taylor Stewart’s goal against Texas State.
Taylor remains on the 2026 roster and should have an opportunity to become a larger part of an offense that will look much different under Owens. With 19 newcomers, it would be irresponsible to assume what Southern Miss’s starting attack will look like Thursday night. What can be said is that Smith and Taylor represent two of the few returning offensive players with measurable production from last season.
How Owens combines them with the new additions could determine how quickly the Golden Eagles improve offensively.
Southern Miss also brings back meaningful experience defensively. Shaelynn Quick started 15 matches in 2025 and logged 1,320 minutes, while Addison Siders started 15 of her 16 appearances and played 1,387 minutes. Both are listed as defenders on the 2026 roster.
Eduarda Flores Fuculo also returns. She recorded an assist against Old Dominion last season and is listed as a junior defender on the current roster. Southern Miss’s biggest statistical problem last season wasn’t merely scoring. It was stopping teams from scoring. Opponents averaged 3.47 goals and 16.2 shots per match against Southern Miss. The Golden Eagles were outscored 59-12 over the season.
Those numbers can’t continue if Southern Miss expects to climb the Sun Belt standings. Owens’s first major task may be creating a defensive identity and making the Golden Eagles harder to play against.
Southern Miss couldn’t have asked for a more intriguing opening matchup. The Golden Eagles travel to Montgomery to face Alabama State at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 13, at the ASU Soccer Complex. It is the first of three consecutive road matches to open the season.
Alabama State is also coming off a difficult 2025 season. The Hornets finished 2-17-1 overall and 1-7 in conference play, scoring 14 goals while allowing 67. Alabama State averaged 0.70 goals per game, nearly identical to Southern Miss’s 0.71.
In other words, Thursday isn’t a matchup between a rebuilding team and an established powerhouse. It’s a chance for Southern Miss to immediately find out whether the offseason changes have moved the program forward. The Golden Eagles don’t need to look like a finished product in Montgomery. With 19 newcomers and an entirely new coaching staff, that would be unrealistic. But they should be looking for signs.
Can Southern Miss control more of the ball?
Can it prevent the long stretches of pressure that plagued last year’s team?
Can the Golden Eagles create more consistent scoring opportunities?
And perhaps most importantly, can Owens establish the type of identity that carried his William Carey teams for two decades?
Thursday gives us the first answers.
There is also value in Southern Miss opening against Alabama State because the difficulty level rises almost immediately afterward. Following Thursday’s opener, Southern Miss travels to McNeese on Saturday and then heads to Starkville to face Mississippi State on Aug. 23.
Owens makes his Hattiesburg debut Aug. 27 against Southeastern Louisiana, beginning a three-match homestand that also includes Jacksonville State and Southern. Southern Miss then travels to Nicholls for its final nonconference match Sept. 10.
Then comes the Sun Belt. Southern Miss opens conference play at home Sept. 18 against James Madison. The league schedule also includes Arkansas State, Louisiana Tech, Louisiana, Coastal Carolina, Troy, South Alabama, App State, Georgia Southern and defending regular-season champion ULM.
The conference tournament returns to Foley, Alabama, beginning Nov. 9, but only eight teams qualify. Considering Southern Miss finished 1-9 in league play last season, simply getting back into that postseason conversation would represent meaningful progress.
What Would a Successful 2026 Season Look Like?
This probably isn’t the year to define Southern Miss soccer by a specific win total. There are too many unknowns.
Nineteen new players. A new head coach. A new staff. A roster assembled from high schools, junior colleges, Division I programs, Division II programs and NAIA programs.
Owens isn’t inheriting a finished product. He’s building one.
That makes the first year about whether Southern Miss begins looking like a team capable of eventually competing near the top of the Sun Belt. Last season the Golden Eagles were outscored by 47 goals. They won twice. They finished near the bottom of the conference standings.
The bar for improvement is clear. Be harder to score against. Create more chances. Turn some of last year’s lopsided losses into competitive matches. Turn competitive matches into points. And get to late October with something meaningful still to play for.
If Southern Miss can do those things, Owens’s first season should be considered a step in the right direction.
Thursday night won’t come with the attention of a Saturday at The Rock or a Southern Miss baseball weekend at Pete Taylor Park. But it represents one of the more interesting beginnings on campus this fall.
Southern Miss went outside the traditional Division I coaching carousel and hired a coach who spent more than two decades building a national championship program practically in the Golden Eagles’ backyard. Owens already knows Hattiesburg. He knows Mississippi soccer. He knows how to build a program. Now we get to find out what that looks like at Southern Miss. The first chapter begins Thursday night in Montgomery.
Southern Miss at Alabama State
Thursday, Aug. 13
6 p.m. CT
ASU Soccer Complex — Montgomery, Alabama
And after an offseason of changes, new faces and a new direction, Southern Miss soccer finally gets to see what the rebuild looks like when the scoreboard counts.
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