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The last time Southern Mississippi visited Kroger Field, the Golden Eagles mounted the biggest rally in program history with a 25-point comeback and stunned Kentucky 44-35.

Southern Mississippi shut down the Wildcats in the second half and outscored Kentucky 27-0 in the final two quarters of the season opener eight years ago. Mark Stoops hasn’t forgotten the setback and made it a point to remind his squad of the loss ahead of the season opener for both teams on Saturday night.

“We always use anything just to bring to their attention,” Stoops said. “We constantly talk about one year to the next, whether it’s bad streaks or good streaks, it really goes out the window, year to year, you have to be able to play well in this game. … it will be brought up and certainly the players know. They’re not oblivious to all that and they understand that we have to go play well, there’s a lot of teams that could beat us and we could beat a lot of teams.”

A lot has changed since the last two teams met in 2017. Kentucky responded with a 24-17 win a year later in Hattiesburg. Southern Miss has changed conferences with a move to the Sun Belt and has a makeover roster this season that features 51 newcomers. The staff also includes a new offensive and defensive coordinator.

Southern Miss coach Will Hall doesn’t think the roster turnover will affect his squad in the opener.

“A lot of those kids at one point in their lives have played in SEC venues, so I don’t think our kids will be in awe of that by any means,” he said. “We are going to have respect for that, but we are not going to be in awe of that. We understand at the end of the day, it’s football. It’s like the movie ‘Hoosiers.’

“They throw that thing up there and drop it down, the rim is ten feet tall, no matter where you play basketball. This is football on turf and our kids are going to play football, and we’re looking forward to it.”

Despite the unknowns, Kentucky defensive coordinator Brad White said the Golden Eagles are capable of a repeat feat they pulled off eight years ago if the Wildcats aren’t prepared.

“There’s plenty of recent occurrences where if we don’t play well, you’re in a dogfight for four quarters and sometimes you’re on the wrong end or close to the wrong end,” White said. “Our guys understand that, I’ve got no worries about them (having) a letdown or looking ahead or any of that. Their sole focus has been Southern Miss. They dove hard into it, we tried to do a really deep dive.”

Hall said Kentucky’s defense will provide a “great test” for his squad. He singled out Kentucky standout Deone Walker.

“(He) is obviously a great player and we have a tremendous amount of respect for him,” Hall said. “It’s about fundamentals, technique and effort. You have to rely on fundamentals and technique and you have to play with great effort.

“That’s the only way to win any type of competitive battle. We feel like we compete every day here and we are going to definitely compete on Saturday when we go to Lexington. But he’s a great football player and he will be a tremendous opponent for us.”

For Stoops and the Wildcats, it’s a matter of focusing on the internal instead of the external on both sides of the football.

“I think most teams will tell you, them and us, we need to worry about ourselves — how you execute and how you play and how clean you operate and all that,” he said.