There was a point last fall when Southern Miss volleyball looked like a team that might be ready to make a real run at the top of the Sun Belt. The Golden Eagles opened conference play with consecutive sweeps of ULM, moved to 10-3 overall and had established themselves as one of the better defensive teams in the country. Sadie McAda was developing into one of the league’s most complete outside hitters. Sunni Sheppard was seemingly everywhere on the back row. Freshman middle blocker Elly Stewart was beginning to look like much more than a promising young player.
Then came the reminder of how small the margin can be in the Sun Belt.
Southern Miss finished 17-12 overall and 8-8 in conference play, a season good enough to show progress but not good enough to separate the Golden Eagles from the crowded middle of the league. There were nights when Southern Miss looked capable of playing with just about anybody on its schedule. There were others when the offense disappeared and all the digging, serving and defense in the world couldn’t compensate for it.
That’s what makes 2026 interesting.
Jenny Hazelwood enters her fifth season in Hattiesburg with a program that doesn’t really need to prove it can be competitive anymore. The Golden Eagles have already done that. Hazelwood won 21 matches and reached the Second Round of SBC Tournament in her first season in 2022, and last year’s team again showed stretches of what Southern Miss could become. The next step is turning those stretches into an entire season.
For once, Southern Miss won’t exactly sneak up on the Sun Belt either.
The Golden Eagles were picked third in the West Division in the league’s preseason coaches poll, trailing Arkansas State and South Alabama. More telling, Southern Miss received one of the 14 first-place votes. McAda and Sheppard were both selected to the preseason All-Sun Belt team. Arkansas State is clearly the favorite, but Southern Miss has reached the point where coaches around the league expect the Golden Eagles to be somewhere in the conversation.
Any discussion about how far this team can go starts with Sadie McAda.
The senior outside hitter produced 387 kills last season, nearly 130 more than anyone else on the Southern Miss roster. She averaged 3.79 kills per set, hit .229 and added 369 digs, 19 service aces and 45 total blocks. Those aren’t simply the numbers of a hitter who gets fed the ball repeatedly. McAda has developed into a legitimate six-rotation player and one of the most dependable performers in the conference.
She’s also the player Southern Miss can turn to when volleyball gets messy. When the pass isn’t perfect, the play breaks down and somebody still has to find a way to score, McAda has shown she can do it. She had 17 kills and 16 digs against Mississippi State last season. She went for 15 kills and 22 digs in a conference win over Louisiana. Even during an ugly offensive performance against Arkansas State, she still managed 14 kills and 17 digs.
The question isn’t whether McAda can handle that workload again. It’s whether Southern Miss can keep from asking her to handle quite so much of it.
That’s where the departure of Brynn Botkin becomes significant. Botkin finished second on the team with 261 kills, led Southern Miss with 43 service aces and was third with 318 digs. That’s a lot of production to replace, particularly for a team whose identity was built around serving, extending rallies and making opponents work for points.
Southern Miss probably isn’t going to replace Botkin with one player. It doesn’t necessarily have to. If two or three players take another step, the Golden Eagles could actually become more difficult to defend.
The most obvious candidate is Elly Stewart.
Her freshman season probably didn’t receive the attention it deserved. Stewart finished third on the team with 186 kills, hit .259 and led Southern Miss with 74 total blocks. As the season progressed, she stopped looking like a freshman being worked into the rotation and started looking like somebody who could eventually become one of the better middles in the conference.
There were signs throughout the year. Stewart had 13 kills against Mississippi State. She recorded eight kills and six block assists in the win over Louisiana. Against Arkansas State, she added eight kills and five blocks. Those performances matter because the easiest way to defend an offense centered around an elite outside hitter is to load up on the pins and dare somebody else to win the match.
A more dangerous Stewart changes that.
If Southern Miss can consistently score through the middle, opposing blockers can’t simply drift toward McAda. The setter has more options in transition. McAda gets more one-on-one opportunities. Broken rallies become a little less predictable. It’s one of those developments that won’t necessarily show up in a preseason headline but could change the entire complexion of the offense.
There are other possibilities. Lillie Johnson returns after recording 143 kills and 60 blocks. Aubrey Judd had 114 kills in 70 sets. Diana Wells might be one of the more intriguing players on the roster after hitting .301 in limited action as a freshman. Wells only appeared in 18 sets, so the sample is small, but a 6-foot outside hitter who showed that kind of efficiency when given opportunities is worth watching.
The defense, meanwhile, shouldn’t require much reconstruction.
Southern Miss became one of the better digging teams in college volleyball last season. Late in the regular season, the Golden Eagles ranked ninth nationally in digs per set and led the Sun Belt in the category. They eventually finished with 1,748 digs compared with 1,684 by their opponents.
Much of that starts with Sunni Sheppard.
The senior enters 2026 as one of the most established defensive players in the Sun Belt after finishing last season with 449 digs, 94 assists and 25 service aces. She also established a Southern Miss rally-scoring era record with 39 digs in a match. Sheppard’s value goes beyond simply accumulating digs. An experienced libero changes what a team is willing to do defensively. Blocks don’t have to be perfect. A swing that appears headed for the floor can suddenly become another transition opportunity. Long rallies become something Southern Miss is comfortable playing.
The problem was that the Golden Eagles occasionally had just as much trouble putting away the opponent.
The final numbers explain why Southern Miss went 8-8 in conference play despite playing high-level defense. The Golden Eagles hit .211 for the season while holding opponents to .199. Southern Miss finished with 1,334 kills. Its opponents had 1,328.
That’s basically an entire season played on a razor’s edge.
Some of the losses against better Sun Belt opponents exposed the issue. Southern Miss hit just .056 in a four-set loss at Arkansas State. After hitting .150 in the opening set, the Golden Eagles hit .039, .024 and .022 over the final three. Against Texas State later in the season, Southern Miss hit .046 for the match and finished the third set with six kills and eight attack errors.
Those weren’t nights when the defense collapsed. Southern Miss simply couldn’t score.
That’s probably the biggest difference between an 8-8 conference team and one capable of challenging Arkansas State and South Alabama at the top of the West. Southern Miss doesn’t need to dramatically reinvent itself. The Golden Eagles simply need to become harder to shut down.
The setter position will play a role in that. Morgen Durgens returns after leading Southern Miss with 597 assists last season. She shared much of the setting workload with Gaby Zovko, who added 450 assists. With another year in the system, Durgens gives Hazelwood an experienced option around which to build the offense.
There is another interesting part of McAda’s development that doesn’t show up in the indoor statistics. She spent the spring playing beach volleyball for Southern Miss and, along with Laurel Dennis, became part of the Golden Eagles’ top pairing. The duo earned first-team All-Sun Belt honors, and during the spring they defeated a Nebraska pairing that included indoor All-Americans Bergen Reilly and Teraya Sigler.
Beach volleyball isn’t indoor volleyball, but there is something to be said for spending an entire spring in a format that requires players to do everything. There is nowhere to hide on the beach. Players have to pass, defend, serve, attack and read the game. For someone who was already Southern Miss’ most complete indoor attacker, another spring of high-level volleyball should only help.
The biggest difference surrounding Southern Miss this fall might simply be expectations.
The biggest difference surrounding Southern Miss this fall might simply be expectations.
Arkansas State received 12 first-place votes in the preseason Sun Belt West poll. South Alabama received one. Southern Miss received the other. The Golden Eagles finished with 64 points, comfortably ahead of the rest of the division behind the two preseason favorites.
That doesn’t mean Southern Miss should suddenly be labeled a championship favorite. Arkansas State beat the Golden Eagles twice last season, including a straight-set victory in the Sun Belt Tournament, and enters 2026 with a roster built to contend for the league championship. South Alabama isn’t going anywhere either.
But Southern Miss has enough back that another middle-of-the-pack season would probably feel different this time.
Hazelwood inherited the program in December 2021 and immediately gave it a jolt, winning 21 matches and reaching the NIVC Final Four during her first season. Four years later, Southern Miss is at a different stage of the build. The question isn’t whether the Golden Eagles can win matches anymore. It’s whether they can consistently beat the teams near the top of the conference.
That requires McAda to remain one of the Sun Belt’s best outside hitters. It requires Sheppard to continue anchoring one of the league’s better back rows. It probably requires Stewart to become more dangerous offensively. And somewhere between Wells, Johnson, Judd and the rest of the rotation, Southern Miss has to find enough additional offense that opponents can’t spend an entire afternoon building their defensive plan around stopping No. 6.
The encouraging part is that Southern Miss doesn’t appear far away.
The encouraging part is that Southern Miss doesn’t appear far away.
Saturday’s final preseason tune-up provided another glimpse. The Golden Eagles swept Nicholls 25-17, 25-9 and 25-10 at the Wellness Center, hitting .386 as a team while holding the Colonels to a negative hitting percentage. McAda had 11 kills. Stewart had 10. Wells added nine. Sheppard served five aces.
It’s an exhibition, and nobody should draw sweeping conclusions from an August match against Nicholls. But the distribution of the offense was noteworthy. McAda led the way without having to be the entire offense. Stewart was productive. Wells was involved. Southern Miss scored from several places on the floor.
If that becomes the norm rather than an August snapshot, this could be a considerably different team.
There probably isn’t one dramatic adjustment separating Southern Miss from the top of the Sun Belt. Volleyball usually isn’t that simple. It could be two fewer attack errors in the second set. One more middle attack that freezes a blocker. A Sheppard dig that becomes a transition kill instead of a free ball. A service run that turns 14-14 into 18-14.
Last season, those small differences added up to 8-8.
Southern Miss enters 2026 believing they can add up to something more.
For the first time in a while, the rest of the Sun Belt appears to believe it, too.
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