In the always-volatile world that is mid-major college basketball, South Alabama’s Richie Riley seems to have found the right mix this season.

Despite modest expectations coming into the year, the Jaguars are off to their best Sun Belt Conference start in 11 years. They boast a 3-0 league record and an 11-4 overall mark heading into Thursday’s home game with preseason Sun Belt favorite Arkansas State (11-4, 2-1), set for 7 p.m. at the Mitchell Center.

“They’ve been picked to win our league by every publication, by every coach in our league,” South Alabama’s Richie Riley said. “They picked us almost last (actually 11th out of 14). But the beauty of basketball is you get 40 minutes to prove it. And that’s a challenge for our guys. I mean, we’re excited about the challenge, have a ton of respect for their team. They’re good. They were picked No. 1 for a reason.”

As is common in the portal era, South Alabama features a roster heavy on transfers, with newcomers accounting for seven players in its 10-man rotation. Mobile native and former Mr. Basketball Barry Dunning has come into his own — averaging 12.7 points and 5.9 rebounds per game — after stops the last two years at Arkansas and UAB, while a pair of NAIA transfers — guards Myles Corey (Jessup) and JJ Wheat (Freed-Hardeman) — have become the team’s top offensive and defensive players, respectively.

Four other newcomers — guards Dylan Fasoyiro (Daemen) and Jayden Cooper (Faulkner) and forwards Randy Brady (Chattanooga) and Cantia Rahming (Saint Leo) — also play key roles for the Jaguars. Riley’s past six teams have also been loaded with transfers, but there’s something different about this group that makes them “fun to coach,” he said.

“We really wanted to identify guys that were about winning, and it showed in their track record,” Riley said. “… These guys may not have been noticed by other places just because of the level they were playing at, but watching a lot of film and communicating with these guys and really getting to know them, I felt good about them.

“You don’t ever know until you get somebody here and you coach them for yourself. But I’m thinking more than anything, we really hit on what type of people they are, because there’s nothing about these guys that is not just so fun to coach.”

Though Corey leads the Sun Belt in scoring at 16.7 points per game, the Jaguars have succeeded this season mostly with defense and by taking care of the ball. As of Wednesday, they rank eighth nationally in fewest points allowed per game (60.9), fifth in turnover margin (6.8 per game), seventh in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.83) and tied for first in fewest turnovers per game (8.9).

South Alabama features a compact 2-3 zone defense, a variation on the style Riley’s teams have played in the past. It relies on “pesky” guards, “athletic, long” wing players and “high IQ” willing rebounders in the post — all of which the Jaguars have in abundance this season, he said.

Here’s a look at the Jaguars’ defense during Saturday’s game vs. Georgia Southern:

With forward Julian Margrave (foot) and guard Maxwell Land (knee) out for the year due to injury and guard Ethan Kizer taking a redshirt year, only three players who see regular time for the Jaguars this season were on the team a year ago. Guard Judah Brown leads the Sun Belt in 3-point shooting (46.3%, which is 11th nationally), while 6-foot-8 forward Elijah Ormiston provides steady minutes off the bench.

But it’s redshirt freshman John Broom who has been the revelation among the program veterans, leading the team in rebounds (6.2 per game) and steals (1.9) while averaging 6.8 points per game. The 6-foot-5 Alabama native, an All-State performer at Jacksonville High School in 2023, said he took advantage of his year away from the court to get stronger.

“I spent the whole year with my weight coach, David Ventress, he put on 30 pounds on me,” Broom said. “We did a lot of weight work, a lot of working on my game and stuff like that. So that’s definitely improved, and it’s definitely helped me to play at a high level.”

Though the Jaguars struggled at times early in the season — including a stunning one-point loss at home to Western Illinois on Nov. 26, they’ve been on an absolute tear since mid-December. They’ve won four straight games by at least 26 points, three of them against conference opponents, and two of them on the road.

South Alabama last started 3-0 in the Sun Belt in 2012-13, when it finished 14-6 in league play and played in the CollegeInsiders.com Tournament at season’s end. The Jaguars were last 4-0 in 2007-08, the most-recent time they’ve played in the NCAA tournament.

The 25-plus-point blowouts have also been a rarity for the Jaguars over the years. They last had as many as three in a season in 1997-98, also a year they made it to the NCAA tournament.

“It’s been our defense,” Corey said of the key to the Jaguars’ hot start in-conference. “Just staying within our principles and doing everything we know how to do and taking care of the paint, keeping the ball out of the paint. And just having a hot start has been everything for us. So as long as we keep doing that, we’ll be solid.”

Thursday’s game is the first of four straight at home for South Alabama, which also hosts Old Dominion on Saturday, Southern Miss on Dec. 15 and in-state rival Troy on Dec. 18. The Trojans are also off to a fast start, standing at 10-4, 3-0, heading into Thursday’s home game vs. Texas State.

Should South Alabama continue to roll during this homestand, the Jaguars would be in prime position for a top-four seed in the Sun Belt tournament, which begins March 4 in nearby Pensacola, Fla. The Sun Belt has a new postseason format this year, with the top four seeds getting a bye all the way to the quarterfinals and the top two automatically placed in the semis.

“We’ve got to hold home,” Riley said. “We let a couple of non-con games get away at home. And we weren’t who we are at that point of the season. We’ve gotten a lot better, which is a credit to our guys.

“But if you want to have aspirations of being in the conversation of getting one of those top two seeds, winning the league or whatever it is at the end of the year, you’ve got to hold home.”

Arkansas State is the opposite of South Alabama in many ways, leading the Sun Belt in scoring at 79.3 points per game, but in the middle of the pack defensively. Coach Bryan Hodgson’s Red Wolves received 12 of 14 first-place votes in preseason rankings by league coaches, and feature the preseason Sun Belt Player of the Year in Louisiana transfer Kobe Julien (who has missed the last three games with an ankle injury, but is expected to play on Thursday).

Julien and senior guard Taryn Todd — second in the Sun Belt in scoring behind Corey at 16.4 points per game — give Arkansas State arguably two of the top 10 players in the conference. They’ve been joined this season by a pair of SEC transfers, 6-8 forward Rashaud Marshall (Ole Miss) and 3-point specialist Joseph Pinion (Arkansas).

“They’ve got a lot of talent and they’re well-coached,” Riley said. “They had a lot of guys back off the team that went to the conference championship game last year. And then you add Kobe Julien, who is preseason player of the year who has been one of the best players in the Sun Belt for a long time.

“You throw in the SEC transfers, and they’ve got depth, they’ve got athleticism. And what they can do is they can score in bunches and run off and leave you.”