It was the first day of spring football practice, but South Alabama offensive lineman Reggie Smith went ahead and threw down the gauntlet anyway.

The Jaguars’ breakthrough 10-win season last fall was nice and all, but expectations are even higher in 2023. Smith, South Alabama’s first-team center, made the comment in the context of talking about the offensive line’s work during the offseason, but clearly articulated his awareness of what the ceiling for this year’s team might be.

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“Everybody’s been on it and just trying to improve on last season,” Smith said, “just hoping for 12 wins this season.”

It’s not outrageous for South Alabama to take another big step in 2023, given the leap the Jaguars made last season. After never finishing with a winning record as an FBS program and after going 5-7 under first-year coach Kane Wommack in 2022, the Jaguars doubled their win total and reached a bowl game for the first time in six years.

Getting to Smith’s goal of 12 wins would mean either going perfect in the regular season — which includes non-conference games at Tulane and Oklahoma State and also key Sun Belt Conference dates with the likes of Troy, Marshall and James Madison — or reaching the conference championship game for the first time ever and playing another bowl game. However, those things are not exactly discussed around the South Alabama field house.

I think that our players have an expectation for themselves, but we don’t put preseason goals up on a board,” said Wommack, who is 15-10 in two seasons with the Jaguars. “You walk in our building, you’re not going see ‘go to a bowl game.’ We’re not going to talk about conference championships or how many wins or whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, when you put your head on a pillow at night, you know what the expectation is — that we all do it to compete at the highest level.

“You look at our schedule that just came out a week or two ago, and, it’s a challenging schedule. I think it’s even harder than what it was a year ago. But we should be up for those things. Youlook at every game and every game’s winnable. And so for our players, I think they need to play with an expectation.”

With defending champion Troy having suffered key personnel losses from the 2022 season and with most other West Division opponents still in the building stages, there’s a good chance South Alabama will be the favorite to win the division in 2023 when preseasons predictions begin arriving over the summer. The Jaguars return 18 of the 22 players who started in the season-ending New Orleans Bowl against Western Kentucky, including quarterback Carter Bradley, running back La’Damian Webb, wide receivers Caullin Lacy and Devin Voisin, all its tight ends and four starting linemen on the offensive side of the ball.

On defense, nine full-time starters are back from the end of last season, with two key veterans returning from injuries that cost them all or part of 2022. Safety Keith Gallmon is fully healthy after suffering a torn pectoral muscle last August, while linebacker Quentin Wilfawn is working his way toward 100% after missing all but three games last season with a shoulder/neck injury that resulted in surgery.

Gallmon, a three-year starter and four-year contributor prior to his injury, said he’s not worried about the mental aspect of his team coming off such a successful year. The 2023 season is a long way off, after all.

“I think we’ll handle it,” Gallmon said. “Our mindset really just locked in on our work and our process. So every day we’re just going to come out here and try to get better and focus on us, because that’s all we can do. So each spring practice, it’s going to be a work day. If we have a good day or have a bad day, we’re going to get back, watch film just like any other time. And then when the season comes along, we should be ready to handle adversity.”

Said Smith, “We just focus on what we can focus on. We pretty much don’t worry about what other people coming in looking at us are thinking about. As long as we’re controlling what we control and, and moving the dial for what we need to do, we’ll always be OK.”

Still, it’s unmistakable that this is a different South Alabama program than the one Wommack inherited a little over two years ago. The Jaguars’ roster is littered with high-level veterans who are now in their fourth or fifth years with the team, as well as many other highly talented players who transferred in from Power 5 programs in the last 18 months.

South Alabama signed arguably its best-ever recruiting class in December and February, a 14-man group that ranks fourth in the Sun Belt overall (but first in average player ranking). The rising level of football talent in Mobile is getting difficult to ignore.

“We talk about all the time in our building — ‘expectation is more powerful than belief,’” Wommack said. “Belief is what Disney movies are made of. But expectation is knowing that you are there and can sustain what it takes to operate at a high level. And I think we’re moving in that direction.”