South Alabama basketball coach Richie Riley had all his “guys” back on Wednesday night, and the result was a 75-62 victory over Southern Miss at the Mitchell Center.

Forward Randy Brady returned to the lineup after a three-game absence due to an ankle injury, helping restore some normalcy to the middle of the Jaguars’ 2-3 zone defense. Guard Dylan Fasoyiro had arguably his best game of the season, scoring a game-high 17 points and hitting four 3-pointers.

The victory lifted South Alabama to 13-5 overall and 5-1 in Sun Belt Conference play, a nice bounce-back from a 73-61 overtime loss to Old Dominion this past Saturday. The Jaguars are at least temporarily alone in first place in the conference, a half-game in front of the Monarchs, who host Appalachian State on Thursday night.

“My challenge for these guys is to be who they are and when they’re who they are, they deserve to win them all,” Riley said. “And thankfully they were able to win today and get back in that win column.”

Southern Miss (8-10, 3-3) controlled the first five-plus minutes of the game, as South Alabama struggled to find its shooting stroke. The Jaguars missed nine straight shots at one point, but Judah Brown and Elijah Ormiston connected on back-to-back 3s to put their team up 14-10 with 11:27 left in the first half. South Alabama largely controlled the action after that, leading 42-33 at halftime and by double-digits for most of the second half. The Jaguars had a bit of an off-night shooting overall (36.8%), but hit 14 3-pointers and made 19 of 21 free throws.

“That (loss to ODU) wasn’t who we are,” Riley said. “And we talked about it, and our guys have a high level of maturity and a high level of care. And they’ve all got big hearts, so they were, they were really frustrated with how we played and how we didn’t show up on Saturday as ourselves

“Tonight was more us and when we’re us it allows us to shoot 36% from the field and still have a chance to win. We won by double figures because our defense was really good and usually is we played with more force.”

Barry Dunning added 12 points and seven rebounds for South Alabama, while Brown scored 11 and JJ Wheat eight with four steals and Brady seven with four rebounds, four assists and two steals. Leading scorer Myles Corey struggled with foul trouble, limiting him to eight points in just 20 minutes of action.

Albert Worrell led Southern Miss with 13 points, while Andre Curbelo added 11 and DeAntoni Gordon 10. Golden Eagles forward Denijay Harris — averaging 16.4 points and a league-best 11.2 rebounds this season and coming off a monstrous 32-point, 23-rebound performance against Texas State last Saturday — was held relatively in-check on Wednesday, finishing with 11 points and 14 boards.

“It’s always our goal just to keep the ball out the paint,” Brady said. “(Harris), he has a nice touch around the rim, so we just focused on keeping the ball out of the paint and like just keeping him off the boards.”

South Alabama’s victory was its fifth straight and eighth in the last nine meetings with Southern Miss. The Jaguars now turn their attention to Troy, which visits on Saturday for a 3 p.m. tip-off.

Troy (11-6, 4-2) won 77-58 at Louisiana-Monroe on Wednesday night. The rivalry game should make for another good crowd at the Mitchell Center, which saw a season-best attendance of 2,568 for the Southern Miss game.

“We’re looking forward to the fans coming back out like they did today,” Brady said. “We really appreciate that. I feel like they helped us a lot today and I feel like it’ll be big for us Saturday, a big rivalry game. And hopefully we pull that one off, too.”