Southern Miss vs. UL-Lafayette, 2016 New Orleans Bowl: Time, live stream, TV schedule, and 3 things to know

The New Orleans Bowl will be played Saturday night at the Superdome. As usual, the game has some local flavor to it.

Louisiana-Lafayette will face Southern Miss, so for the sixth year in a row, the game will include a Louisiana team. ULL was here four years in a row before an absence last season, and those four games offered the largest attendance figures of all New Orleans Bowls to date. Organizers surely won’t mind having the Ragin’ Cajuns back in town. ULL has also won all four times, so the Cajuns might not mind either.

Both ULL and Southern Miss are 6-6 on the year. The Golden Eagles are favored to win, in large part because the Cajuns’ offense has lagged all year and appears to be the weakest link between the two teams. If the Eagles can string together a couple of touchdowns and get somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 points, they should win.

TV: 9 p.m. ET, ESPN. The announcers on the call are Jason Benetti, Rod Gilmore, and Quint Kessenich.

Radio: Southern Miss and ULL

Online streaming: WatchESPN

Spread: Southern Miss opened betting favored by 2, but that line has widened somewhat, and now the Eagles are favored by a bit less than a touchdown at most books.

Make friends: SB Nation’s Underdog Dynasty covers both ULL and Southern Miss, and the rest of the Sun Belt and Conference USA. Stop by for fun.

1. The ULL offense has been a problem all year. The Cajuns have had problems finding big plays for a few years now, and things have gotten extra bad in that department in 2016. The running game isn’t particularly dangerous, and the passing game is sometimes good but generally flawed. The Cajuns have run just 44 scrimmage plays of 20-plus yards, placing them 112th out of 128 FBS teams. Pick a higher yardage benchmark, and the story doesn’t get much better. The Cajuns need to be efficient from down to down to score points, and they mostly haven’t been. Their 24 points per game during the regular season was 107th nationally.

2. Southern Miss might have a tricky time on offense, too. The Eagles are 40th in the country in points per game (33), but opponent-adjusted S&P+ sees this as something like a top-80 offense. The ULL defense isn’t amazing, but it’s formidable for a Sun Belt team and could make life hard for Southern Miss. The Golden Eagles have fallen flat on offense in a handful of games, and they weren’t great even in a 30-3 win to close the season against Louisiana-Monroe. Quarterback Nick Mullens has to be sharp.

3. These teams have played each other a bunch over the years, but it’s been a while. The matchup isn’t an especially new one, at least not historically. Southern Miss is 39-11-1 and has played more games against the Cajuns than against any other team except Memphis. But the programs haven’t seen each other since 2008, long before Jay Hopson, Mark Hudspeth, or any of the players currently on the rosters factored in. (Hopson was a USM assistant during parts of the series, however.) It’ll be good to see a series with some history get renewed.