HATTIESBURG (AP) — Southern Miss head coach Doc Sadler called it the best game his team has played this year.

That was obvious. It rivaled the best game Southern Miss has played in any year.
LaDavious Draine had 18 points and Southern Miss opened the game with a 31-6 run and never looked back, nearly doubling up Marshall 101-51 on Saturday.

The Golden Eagles made 86 percent of their shots in the opening blitz and outrebounded Marshall 13-2 over the first nine minutes.

The numbers remained lopsided with Southern Miss hitting 65 percent from the field and Marshall making 25 percent. Southern Miss nailed 48 percent of its 3-pointers while Marshall was 7-of-35 (20 percent). Southern Miss dished out 30 assists to Marshall’s six.

It’s the largest margin of victory over a Division I team in the Doc Sadler era, besting a 76-53 win at North Texas on Feb. 25, 2017. It also marked Marshall’s fewest points since March 5, 2015 at Old Dominion.

Southern Miss beat NAIA members Rust College 106-46 and Southeastern Baptist 111-66 earlier this season.

“Obviously, that’s one of the best games we’ve played since I’ve been here,” Sadler said. “A lot of people would want to talk about the points, but the thing I was most impressed with was that no matter how great a start we had, we continued to defend. It’s hard to do. Even in the second half when the lead extended, the way we played defense is a credit to our guys.”

Draine had four 3-pointers for the Golden Eagles (12-9, 4-5 Conference USA). Kevin Holland also made four 3-pointers and scored 16 points. Two players reached double digits in assists — Tyree Griffin with 15 and Cortez Edwards with 10.

Three players — C.J. Burks, Jon Elmore and Darius George — scored 11 points apiece for Marshall (12-9, 5-3). No one else scored more than four.

Marshall was 14-for-19 at the free throw line, while Southern Miss was only 4-for-6. Sadler was still happy with the way the Golden Eagles controlled that aspect of the game.

“The second thing is that going into the game, we would have to keep them off the free throw line,” Sadler said. “They score 18 points a game there, but they had just 14 and some of those were late. The biggest thing is we knew they couldn’t score inside the lane. They had just 12 today. Jon Elmore is a guy who can get guys easy baskets, and we didn’t give them any down there.”

Southern Miss will go on the road to play at Florida International on Thursday and Florida Atlantic next Saturday.