Bryant Vincent will return this weekend to where his career really took off.

Vincent brings Louisiana-Monroe to face South Alabama on Saturday at Hancock Whitney Stadium in Mobile. The Warhawks are one of the biggest surprises in college football this season, 5-1 overall and tied for first in the Sun Belt West Division with a 3-0 league record.

The 49-year-old Vincent had his greatest success as a high school coach at Spanish Fort, leading the Toros to the 2010 state championship. He soon got his first college coaching job as tight ends coach at South Alabama, and served two different stints under Joey Jones with the Jaguars, including three seasons (2015-17) as assistant head coach, quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator.

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Vincent said he looks back fondly on his time in Coastal Alabama.

“There’s so many great memories and relationships in that time in Baldwin County and Mobile,” said Vincent, who also coached a season at Greenville High School and spent six years on the staff at UAB. “From the four years at Spanish Fort to the first three at South Alabama just trying to be in the fight, to help build that program with Coach Jones at that time.

“… There’s a lot of great people in Mobile, a lot of great relationships, guys that fought for us and helped us and sacrificed a lot to get that program out from the building stages. At the end of the day, it’s about people and to be able to come back, it’s kind of crazy. It’s God’s plan, a lot of times that this thing came back full circle in so many ways.”

Vincent almost entirely remade the ULM roster upon being hired in December, bringing in more than 70 new players through the transfer portal or via traditional high school and junior-college recruiting. And given his many years in the state of Alabama, it’s probably no surprise that he harvested some familiarity territory when putting together his first Warhawks team.

The Warhawks have 16 players with ties to the state of Alabama, including six from the Mobile area and three who transferred in from UAB. That group includes leading receiver Jake Godfrey (Spanish Fort), third-leading tackler Carl Fauntroy (Spanish Fort, UAB) and third-leading rusher Taven Curry (Robertsdale, UAB).

In addition to Vincent, the ULM coaching staff also has numerous ties to Mobile and South Alabama. Warhawks defensive coordinator Earnest Hill was a highly successful high school head coach at McGill-Toolen before spending the 2021 season on the Jaguars’ staff as running backs coach. (Hill’s son, former Jaguars running back Bryan Hill, worked on the ULM staff as a strength and conditioning assistant).

ULM offensive line coach Cameron Blankenship finished his career at South Alabama after the UAB program folded in 2014, while quarterbacks coach Taylor Dupuis grew up in Daphne and was on the South Alabama staff as a student assistant from 2015-17. Tight ends coach Brady Vincent — Bryant’s son — was also a student assistant for the Jaguars during that era.

South Alabama defensive end Tyler Thomas is also a UAB transfer, and has worked his way into the line rotation in his first season with the Jaguars (3-4, 2-1). Though he wasn’t recruited by UAB until after Vincent had left, he said he’s friendly with several of the players on the ULM roster.

“Taven Curry and Carl Fauntroy, I’m real close with them and obviously I was real close with coach Hill,” said Thomas, a Cottage Hill Christian graduate. “That does add some flame to the fire. You want to go out and you want to compete and you want to beat them.”

Vincent spent the bulk of his college coaching career at UAB, serving as Bill Clark’s offensive coordinator in 2014 and again from 2018-21. When Clark retired suddenly for health reasons in the summer of 2022, Vincent was elevated to interim coach.

Despite a 7-6 record and bowl victory that season, Vincent was passed over for the permanent head coaching job in favor of Trent Dilfer. He then spent a year as offensive coordinator at New Mexico before landing in Monroe after Terry Bowden was fired at the end of the 2023 season.

Once a power on the Division I-AA (now FCS) level, ULM has enjoyed just one winning season — going 8-5 in 2012 — since moving up to the major-college ranks in 1994. The Warhawks went 10-26 in three seasons under Bowden, cratering at 2-10 overall and 0-8 in the Sun Belt last season.

Despite having grown up in Mobile himself, ULM athletics director John Hartwell had never met Vincent before interviewing him in late November. He said the first-year Warhawks coach has not only energized the football program, but also the fan base and the community.

“He had taken offenses that were not in a good place or taken programs that were not in a good place and pretty quickly flipped them around and built winners,” Hartwell said. “But if you’d have told me back on Sept. 1 or even back last Jan. 1, that we’d be 5-1, I’d have said ‘I’m an optimist, too, but I don’t know if it will happen that quickly.’ But obviously, here we are.

“I love not just the direction that it’s going, but I see it as a foundation. It’s not a one-hit wonder. He’s building it firmly from a foundation, not as a house of cards. We’re super-excited for the future of Warhawk football. … There has been some apathy around our program, and people were skeptical. But with the success on the field, the buy-in from the community has been incredible.”

Despite its 5-1 record, ULM has struggled to put points on the board this season, averaging just 22.8 points and ranking last in the league total offense (279.8 yards per game) and passing offense (123.5 ypg). But outside of a 51-3 loss to SEC power Texas, the Warhawks have held opponents to 14, 6, 9, 19 and 21 points.

The attention-getter was a 21-19 victory over James Madison on Oct. 5. The Dukes came in having scored 70 and 63 in their previous two games, but left Malone Stadium in Monroe wondering what hit them.

ULM now stands one victory away from bowl-eligibility, with a trip to the Independence Bowl in that magical 2012 season its only postseason berth since moving up to FBS. And though Vincent’s team is less-talented that nearly every opponent it faces, they make up for it by playing hard and with sound fundamentals.

“You see a consistency in fundamentals at each position, regardless of the jersey number,” Applewhite said. “And that’s coaching to me — that’s great coaching. Those guys are taking care of the football. They’re probably taking 1-3, and in some situations maybe four, series away from the opponent’s offense because of the way they’re establishing the run, believing in the run, staying with the run.

“… (On defense), the principles, the intangibles of football, how fast you get to the ball, how you rake for the ball, how you tackle, how you finish off on ball carriers — that’s what I see. I mean, they’re just very well-coached.”

Kickoff for South Alabama-ULM is set for 4 p.m. Saturday at Hancock Whitney Stadium. The game will be streamed live via ESPN+.