South Alabama suffered one of the more stunning losses in program history a year ago against crosstown opponent Mobile, an NAIA program.

This was not that.

The Jaguars ran away with a 106-41 victory on Monday night at the Mitchell Center, scoring the most-decisive win in seven years under head coach Richie Riley and posting the highest-point total since Riley’s first season. Riley certainly had last year’s loss to the Rams in mind on Monday, down to the number of days since it occurred.

“They came in here 419 days ago and they popped us,” Riley said. “… We watched the game. I wanted our guys to see it — our new guys, and then I wanted our guys that were here to see it.

“… When they watched that game, they saw the pain we went through on Nov. 6 last year. We responded. We came out, we played the right way. We played with toughness. We played with force. We played with urgency. We played incredibly unselfish.”

After falling behind by double-digits early in an 83-74 loss to the Rams to open last season, South Alabama (9-4) took a 10-point lead at the 9:39 mark on Monday and poured it on from there. The Jaguars had runs of 13-0 in the first half and 18-0 in the second half before closing the game with 14 straight points.

South Alabama shot 56% from the floor and made 14 3-pointers while turning the ball over just three times, outrebounding Mobile 45-25 and collecting 16 steals. Meanwhile, Mobile (9-4) had 22 turnovers and just 15 made baskets all night.

“We’ve got dudes in there that really care,” Riley said. “We got dudes in there — and it’s rare in 2024 — they’re not consumed with their self. They genuinely care about each other and they don’t want to let each other down. They don’t want to let South Alabama down. They don’t want to let the program down.”

South Alabama won big despite an off night by guard Myles Corey, the Sun Belt Conference’s leading scorer coming in at 18.4 points per game. He managed only 9 on Monday, but the Jaguars more than made up for it elsewhere in the lineup.

Barry Dunning had 18 points and a game-high nine rebounds, while Dylan Fasoyiro scored 16 with four steals, Elijah Ormiston scored 12 and JJ Wheat had seven assists and four steals without a turnover. Judah Brown — with Ormiston one of just two current South Alabama players who also played in the loss to Mobile last year — scored a career-high 24, going 7-for-9 on 3-pointers.

“It feels a lot better to come in here after doing what we needed to do and instead of losing, so it was good,” said Brown, the longest-tenured Jaguar in his third year with the program. “… My teammates have built that trust in me, and they believe in me to make those shots, to take those shots. It’s funny, I was talking to my teammates before and it’s like, that’s what I do, I shoot.

“I’m a really good shooter and so I do them a disservice if I don’t shoot. So, to have that trust in me from my teammates is just confidence-boosting and you saw that confidence today.”

Jarvis Moss was the lone Mobile player in double figures scoring with 12 points, all on 3-pointers. BJ Comer scored eight in the game’s first five minutes, but none after that.

South Alabama improved to 10-1 all-time vs. Mobile and scored 100-plus points for the fourth time under Riley. The other 100-point outings were 102-41 over Spring Hill in 2021, 103-81 vs. Flagler in 2020 and 106-76 over Huntingdon on Nov. 11, 2018, which was Riley’s first home game as Jaguars head coach.

Dunning — a Mobile native in his first season at South Alabama after transferring in from UAB — said he could tell the victory over Mobile was meaningful to Riley, particularly in light of the crushing defeat to the Rams last season.

“Coach Riley gave us the opportunity to play here,” Dunning said. “So, we owe him everything. We owe him our heart, our tears, our sweat — literally our blood sometimes. It meant something to him. It meant something to us. So, we went out there, we played with all we had, and we came out with a win.”

South Alabama returns to Sun Belt play at Georgia State on Thursday night. Mobile travels to face SSAC and in-state rival Faulkner on Saturday in Montgomery.