Kane Wommack insists “bowl-eligibility” isn’t being discussed around the South Alabama football building this week, but it’s hard to ignore with the Jaguars being so close to achieving it.

South Alabama hosts Marshall on Saturday in a battle of teams that are both 5-5 overall. The winner will be bowl-eligible, while the loser will need to win its regular-season finale Nov. 25 to qualify for the postseason.

RELATED: South Alabama’s Nov. 25 game vs. Texas State picked up for TV

“We don’t have team goals,” Wommack said. “We don’t put charts up at the beginning of the year. We don’t talk about bowl games. We don’t talk about conference championships. We don’t talk about outcomes. If you’re a process-driven program, you can’t really put outcomes out there and say ‘this is what we’re working for.’ Those two things don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand.

“Now, we all want those things. I just don’t think that they need to really be talked about. They’re all aware of it. Everybody wants to make it to a bowl game, but that should be the expectation of this program every year.”

South Alabama evened its record with a 21-14 home victory vs. Arkansas State this past Saturday, a win that also moved the Jaguars to 3-3 in the Sun Belt Conference. Carter Bradley threw two touchdown passes in his return from a knee injury that kept him out the previous week vs. Troy, while La’Damian Webb ran for 163 yards and another score.

The Jaguars played solid defense most of the night, keeping the Red Wolves out of the end zone until the final four minutes of the game. South Alabama’s defense kept Arkansas State quarterback Jaylen Raynor mostly bottled up, sacking him four times and limiting him to just 186 yards passing and 9 yards rushing.

“I was really pleased with our ability to respond to adversity,” defensive coordinator Corey Batoon said. “We kind of challenged them in that two-game stretch (losses to Louisiana and Marshall), but I don’t think we responded well to the ebbs and flows of the game, especially when bad things happened. We weren’t consistent in regards to our effort and especially our execution.

“There was some adversity in that (Arkansas State) game throughout in terms of field position or giving up a first down or just bad things happening and I thought our guys continued to play with tremendous energy. They had good focus, and that’s something to build on.”

Marshall is coming off perhaps its most emotional victory of the season, a 38-33 win over Georgia Southern on a night the school commemorated the 1970 plane crash that killed 45 members of its football team. The Thundering Herd had lost five straight coming into the game after getting off to a 4-0 start.

Running back Rasheen Ali keys the Marshall offense, having rushed for 984 yards and 14 touchdowns in just nine games this season. The Thundering Herd made a switch at quarterback last week, with redshirt freshman Cole Pennington — son of former Marshall and NFL quarterback Chad Pennington — replacing long-time starter Cam Fancher and completing 15 of 20 passes for 201 yards vs. Georgia Southern.

“Rasheen Ali is one of the most-dynamic players in the league,” Wommack said. “He does a really nice job of finding tight windows when he’s in the box. When it’s an inside run, he does a nice job of working the edge of people. He can break tackles and get the extra kind of ‘bull’ yards. And then when he gets out in space, he just has such tremendous speed that he can break away.

“… Cole Pennington did a really nice job. He’s young. They keep it fairly simple for him, but he did a nice job of staying on his reads, not doing too much and taking care of the football for the most part. He made some really nice throws, had some really good, on-time RPO throws that hit for big plays and seemed to give his team a good bit of juice.”

South Alabama vs. Marshall — the first football meeting between the two programs — is also a matchup between two highly regarded young head coaches, 36-year-old Wommack for the Jaguars and 40-year-old Charles Huff for the Thundering Herd. Wommack was defensive coordinator at Indiana before landing the South Alabama job, Huff was assistant head coach and running backs coach at Alabama before being hired at Marshall.

Wommack is 20-15 in three seasons at South Alabama, while Huff is 21-15 in the same number of years at Marshall. Both came into the 2023 season being discussed for possible Power 5 job openings before their teams took a step back this year.

RELATED: 5 takeaways from South Alabama’s 21-14 win over Arkansas State

During his time at Alabama, Huff worked alongside several members of the South Alabama staff. Jaguars offensive coordinator Major Applewhite was an analyst with the Crimson Tide during Huff’s tenure there.

“I spent two years with Coach H,” Applewhite said. “He’s a product of the guys that he’s worked with, whether that’s Coach Saban or others he’s been around. He’s disciplined, does the right things, recruits good players. He’s done a great job getting great players in the program. I expect them to be disciplined and I expect them to play really hard.”

Saturday’s game is Senior Night for 22 South Alabama players, including Bradley, Webb, center Reggie Smith and key several members of the South Alabama defense. Among those suiting up in their final home games are defensive linemen Jamie Sheriff, Jamall Hickbottom and Charles Coleman, linebackers James Miller, Quentin Wilfawn and Trey Kiser and safety Jalen Jordan.

South Alabama — which went 10-3 and played in the New Orleans Bowl in 2022 — has never reached the postseason in back-to-back years. Sheriff said doing so would be an excellent way for his senior class to go out in their final game at Hancock Whitney Stadium.

“It’s a great opportunity, going to a bowl game back-to-back,” Sheriff said. “It’s something that’s never been done here in South Alabama. So to be able to accomplish that would be great for us seniors, to go down in history as the first team to go to a bowl game back-to-back years. It would be a truly amazing moment.”

Kickoff Saturday is set for 4 p.m. at Hancock Whitney Stadium. The game will stream live via ESPN+.