SMU safety Ryan Smith said head coach June Jones is right … even though they sound different when saying the same thing.

Jones said Tuesday that thanks to the Mustangs’ five-game winning streak, his team has “a little bit different swagger.” That was not to suggest the Ponies are over-confident heading into Saturday’s meeting of Conference USA division leaders against Southern Miss. But Jones suggested that there is a visible difference in the players’ body language, and the way they carry themselves in practice. As the victories pile up, there is an increased level of confidence, and therefore an increased urgency to make that success continue.

Ryan Smith said the speed of the SMU defense should help the Mustangs match up well with the athletic Southern Miss offense (photo by Travis Johnston).

Smith that the victories naturally have increased the players’ confidence, but he stopped short of repeating the word “swagger.”

“We definitely believe in what the coaches are teaching us, because it’s working,” Smith said. “We trust each other to do our jobs, because we have good players who understand what we’re being asked to do.

“More than anything, we’re having fun. Winning is fun, and want this feeling to keep coming back each week.”

Smith said that what gives the Ponies’ current winning streak a chance to continue is the fact that he and his teammates make no assumption that it will.

“We know we can’t get complacent,” Smith said. “The next teams we face don’t get any easier. Southern Miss is a really good team, and we’ll see some good teams after that. But Southern Miss is our next game, and they’re a good team.

“We have to keep (the winning streak) in perspective. We’re not good enough yet to just show up and assume we’ll win. We know we have to focus and work hard in practice every day to get the result we want on Saturdays.”

The 2011 Mustangs are a veteran team, with juniors and seniors throughout the starting lineup. But there also are a lot of young players — some working their way into the rotation, and others waiting their turn. Those who have arrived at SMU in the last two years are in unfamiliar territory, in that they have known nothing but seasons that end in bowl games — a stark contrast to what two decades of their predecessors knew to be the norm. Smith said that it’s a good thing that the younger Mustangs expect every season to be successful. He said an awareness of where SMU football has been over the last couple of decades should serve as a reminder to future generations of players about what needs to be done to reach that goal.

“That’s good that the young guys expect to be in a bowl game every year,” Smith said. “We expect them to continue that. We want to leave that legacy for the younger players, that winning is expected at SMU.”

The Mustangs’ next victory will make them eligible to receive an invitation to a bowl game for the third consecutive season. But Southern Miss is a formidable foe Saturday. Coaches and players alike have talked for days about how explosive the Golden Eagles are on both sides of the ball. Many have said Southern Miss looks like the most athletic team SMU has faced all year — including Texas A&M and TCU teams that were ranked when they faced the Mustangs. The Golden Eagles are strong and fast, which gives them the potential to make the Ponies pay for mistakes.

“They’re a very athletic team,” Smith said. “We like playing teams like that. We’re a smaller defense, maybe, but we’re a pretty fast defense, too. It should be a really good matchup.”

Ryan Smith said Southern Miss quarterback Austin Davis is effective in part because he gets the Golden Eagle offense up to the line of scrimmage quickly, which sometimes prevents defenses from changing personnel (photo by Southern Miss athletics).

One challenge that USM will present to the Mustangs is the style in which quarterback Austin Davis — a former walk-on who actually first came to Southern Miss to play on the Golden Eagles’ baseball team — operates head coach Larry Fedora’s offense, a system Smith said the SMU defense refer to as a “look-over” offense.

“They have a lot of formations, so we have to be alert and confident in our technique,” Smith said. “They do some hurry-up, but it’s not a traditional hurry-up, where they get to the line fast and go right away.

“When they do their ‘look-over,’ they get up to the line of scrimmage right away, which makes it hard for the defense to sub different players in and out. Then, once they’re at the line, their offensive coordinator will call down with the formation of the defense and things like that. The quarterback will step back and look to the sideline and maybe change the play, but at that point, we can’t change personnel.”

To prepare for the Golden Eagles’ fast-break offense, the SMU defense is practicing against two scout team offensive groups. As soon as a play is over, the offense runs off the field and another is ready to snap the ball immediately.

“It’s a tough offense, and they have really good players running it,” Smith said. “Their offensive linemen look like they have pretty good feet, all of their receivers can run, and their quarterback does a really good job of getting the ball to them.”

Smith acknowledged that the Southern Miss offense looks different since starting running back Kendrick Hardy (6-0, 219) went down with an arm injury, and has been replaced by two smaller backs, Jeremy Hester (5-6, 180) and Tracy Lampley (5-9, 168). But he said assuming that the offense has lost any octane would be a mistake.

“They’re smaller, but they’re a little quicker, and they’re more compact to the ground,” Smith said. “They’re kind of slippery in the way they run. They can throw a little bubble screen to those guys and they can make big plays out of it, so we have to be good about swarming to the ball and trying to strip it out of there.

“They have a lot of talent. Whoever they have in the game, we really have to come ready to play.”