HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Southern Miss picked up its first road win of the Blake Anderson era Saturday afternoon, holding off a late ULM rally to beat the Warhawks at Malone Stadium, 35-21.

The win was the Golden Eagles' second straight, following last week's 35-31 homecoming victory over Louisiana, and pushed Southern Miss to 3-5 overall and 2-2 in Sun Belt Conference play. After a 1-5 start, the bowl conversation is officially back on the table, but Southern Miss will need to win three of its final four games to make that a reality.

And while Steven Robinson (151 yards, one touchdown) and Jamarice Wilder (104 yards, two touchdowns) once again powered a run game that piled up 249 yards, Anderson was the first to admit it was far from a perfect performance.

"Obviously, super excited about the win," Anderson said in his postgame media availability. "An ugly win in a lot of ways. Felt like we let momentum get away from us in the second half, when we had an opportunity to put it away and didn't, and we were lucky to get away with it the way we did."

There's a lot to unpack from Saturday's win. With that being said, here are five things we learned from Southern Miss' 35-21 win at ULM.

1. Creighton Wilbanks Rewards Anderson's Patience

If there was one feel-good storyline to come out of Monroe, it likely belonged to Golden Eagles kicker Creighton Wilbanks.

After a rough stretch, the Mandeville, La., native went a perfect 2-for-2 on field goals Saturday, connecting from 36 yards with 17 seconds left before halftime and from 39 yards late in the third quarter. Entering the game, Wilbanks had been just 2-for-7 on field goals for the season.

Anderson never wavered, though. Rather than turning to someone else, he and his staff doubled down on their kicker, and Wilbanks spent the week working with a kicking trainer to get back to the basics.

"I think that job is pretty unique. I kind of look at it like a golfer, or a great hitter in baseball," Anderson said. "It's typically something small that gets them out of their mechanics. Most of us don't understand it at all. I can watch it all day, and I can't kick one. So we just told him, 'We're going to ride with you. We're going to keep helping you get through it.'"

Anderson has been down this road before. At Arkansas State, he stuck with a struggling Blake Grupe, who went on to become one of the best kickers in college football and is still kicking in the NFL today.

"So I don't know if Creighton's going to do that, but I know that's there," Anderson said. "I know he has the skill. We just have to be patient, and hopefully we've seen the end of it."

After Wilbanks' second make, Anderson met him on the sideline with an embrace. When asked what was said in that moment, Anderson's answer said a lot about the culture he's trying to build in Hattiesburg.

"He said, 'Thank you.' He said, 'Coach, I appreciate you for trusting me,'" Anderson said. "I mean, we've all been there. We've seen jump shots not go down, and we've struck out. ... That's part of life. So he's got to fail forward, and he needs our support to get there."

Who knows what the rest of this season holds for Wilbanks, but for a kicker who needed a confidence boost, Saturday might be the start of something.

2. A Banged-Up Defense Found a Way to Close

Southern Miss led 27-7 before ULM rattled off two straight fourth-quarter touchdown drives to pull within six. With the momentum firmly on the Warhawks' side, the Golden Eagles' defense needed to make a stand, and it did.

With ULM in four-down territory, Southern Miss made two fourth-down stops. The first, an incompletion on fourth-and-6 from the ULM 36 with 2:31 left, set up Wilder's 32-yard touchdown run less than a minute later. The second, on fourth-and-8 with 58 seconds remaining, put the game on ice.

"That two-minute situation, they're in four-down territory. You know they've got an extra down," Anderson said. "To be able to get four-down stops, to me, is huge, and it really kind of put it out of reach. That's not a foregone conclusion. It's not. And they had the momentum, to be truthful, so huge on our defense. Credit to Joe [Bolden] and his defensive staff to have a plan that worked, and for the guys to go out and make plays."

The Golden Eagles sacked ULM quarterbacks five times for 37 yards, led by JR Stegall's 1.5 sacks, and they did it with a number of reserves seeing meaningful snaps.

"[We're] pretty beat up," Anderson said. "If you look at the jersey numbers out there, there were some guys out there getting their first opportunity in that kind of situation, and they did really, really well."

Safety Landon Sylvie, who finished with 11 tackles, said those sacks go hand-in-hand with what the secondary is doing on the back end.

"That's huge. Just building confidence with our defense, knowing our D-line can get home, so Coach [Joe] Bolden can call [it] more aggressive," Sylvie said. "Because that's all it is: the coverage and the D-line work together. So if they're playing good, we're playing good, and vice versa."

Getting as healthy as possible will be a priority in the short week. But if nothing else, Saturday proved this defense has some depth it can lean on going forward.

3. Grant Page Played Through Pain for a Big Touchdown

Senior wide receiver Grant Page wasn't anywhere close to 100 percent on Saturday, but that didn't stop him from making his return to the field and coming up with one of the biggest plays of the game.

Playing in his first game back from an elbow injury, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound target hauled in a 21-yard touchdown pass from Landry Lyddy midway through the third quarter, pushing the Southern Miss lead to 24-7.

"Pretty good. Wearing a big old brace, playing through a lot of pain," Anderson said of Page's performance. "It hurts, by the way. It's not fixed. It's better, but not fixed ... It's a huge play, and we needed it desperately at the time."

The play didn't come out of nowhere, either. Anderson said the staff gave Page that exact look throughout the week of practice, and when ULM showed the coverage they expected, Southern Miss was ready.

"We gave him that same look in practice this week and gave him the same coverage in practice this week. Made a big emphasis of it, and then to see it come through when we saw the right coverage and make the throw and catch," Anderson said. "That ball came out before he ever turned around. So the timing of those, the ball placement and his ability to play it in the air was huge."

"It was big. I felt all the energy. I was just so excited for him," Robinson said. "It just felt good. The whole team was happy to see him, so it felt good."

4. Anderson Has Kobi Albert's Back

One of the more controversial moments of the afternoon came when cornerback Kobi Albert was flagged for targeting on a hit against a sliding ULM quarterback early in the fourth quarter. The penalty, which comes with an automatic ejection, gave the Warhawks a first down at the Southern Miss 14, and ULM punched in a touchdown about a minute later.

Anderson understood the call. He just didn't love it.

"I think it's a really, really tough play on his part. I thought it was a bang-bang play," Anderson said. "I get the call. If it was our quarterback, we would want it, too. I don't think it's real fair to the defense when they both initiate the slide and the tackle at the same time. It was not in any way, shape or form, in my opinion, malicious. It's just the world we're in and quarterback safety, and I don't know that it could've been handled any differently."

Albert, who opened the season with three interceptions against Alcorn State, had already recorded a sack Saturday before the ejection, and his absence was felt down the stretch.

"I hate it for him. We needed him out there," Anderson said. "I think it's beyond kind of absurd to think that he could've pulled off that tackle that late when you watch it, even in slow motion. So, I mean, he'll be back out there next week ready to go, and I hope the kid's not hurt. It's not what he's trying to do. He's just trying to make a play."

Because the targeting call came in the second half, NCAA rules call for Albert to sit out the first half of Thursday's game against James Madison unless the call is overturned on appeal. We've yet to hear anything regarding Albert's status, but we will provide an update once there is one.

5. This Team Is Learning How to Win Ugly

A month ago, a game like Saturday's might have slipped away from Southern Miss. We saw it at Tulane. We saw it at Troy.

The Golden Eagles didn't have much juice on the sideline in the first half, and Anderson said that was the focus of his halftime message.

"We really just talked about a sense of urgency. I just didn't feel like we had a ton of energy on the sideline the first half," Anderson said. "It's something that's real when you come here. You don't thrive off of the energy from the stadium and from the fans and the environment. You have to bring it, and that takes a mature football team, and I don't think we did a great job of that."

Even so, Southern Miss didn't turn the ball over, it forced turnovers of its own and it made the plays it needed to make late. That shows real growth for a team that started this season 1-5 before winning these last two.

"Man, there's no way to be on point and have everything go perfect 12 weeks in a row. It's just not," Anderson said. "So to win one when you're not at your best, to win one on the road against a team that thrives on people coming in here and falling asleep to some degree – they thrive on it. ... But to get it when you're not at your best, on the road, in this environment, says a lot about the guys."

As proud as Anderson is of his team's progress, he's quick to point out that there's still a long way to go. But he also believes the process is starting to pay off.

"We're a different team than we were when we started," Anderson said. "We still have a long, long, long way to go. We still make way too many mistakes. But games are hard to win. And so to me, it just tells me that what we're doing is working. The guys are growing up. We're playing better and better and better, and there's still better football ahead of us if we just keep doing that."

Next Up: James Madison

There's no time to celebrate a second consecutive Sun Belt win, as Southern Miss returns to Hattiesburg to host James Madison on a short week, with the Dukes coming in on a two-game losing streak. A win would give the Golden Eagles three straight victories and push them above .500 in Sun Belt play. It will be a tough hill to climb, but Anderson believes this could be a massive moment for his program.

“This would be a huge moment for our football team, where we are, if we could pack this thing and get a win Thursday night," Anderson said. "Hopefully people see where we're trying to go, how we're trying to go about doing it and the approach we're taking, and understand that we need their support now. We don't want to wait until we get there. We'd like to have it along the way. So I just encourage people to come out. It would be huge for us. Our guys do feed off the energy in the building. It's real.”

Kickoff between Southern Miss and James Madison is set for 7 p.m. CT Thursday at Renasant Stadium, and the game will be televised on ESPN2. Stay tuned to Southern Miss Golden Eagles On SI for more Southern Miss football coverage throughout the week.