Southern’s Dawson Odums is seeking that killer instinct

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana  -- Maybe it’s fitting that the Southern football team will open its 2013 season on a Friday. Too bad it’s not Friday the 13th.

To relate a camplong message, coach Dawson Odums reached into the wayback machine and pulled out the villain from a famous 1980s horror franchise.

“He told us he needed a bunch of Jasons on defense and to be relentless,” Southern defensive back Virgil Williams said, referring to Jason Voorhees from the “Friday the 13th” movies. “That’s our goal in this camp and going into the season.”

If Southern fans start wearing hockey masks to games, it would mean the message got through and the Jaguars are playing just the way Odums wants.

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Southern’s Dray Joseph is crafting his own path

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana  --  When he represented the Southern football team at Southwestern Athletic Conference media day last month, quarterback Dray Joseph may have been asked as many questions about his attire — a bright silver suit with a bow tie and pocket square — as he was his leadership skills or physical tools.

When he and his teammates moved into their dorm rooms at the start of fall camp, Joseph carried not an Xbox or PlayStation but “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

The senior’s haircut began as a mohawk but has grown into something harder to define.

“He sets his own path,” said West St. John coach Robert Valdez, who coached Joseph in high school. “He’s never been one to follow the crowd.”

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Aaron Hall takes long road back for Southern

BATON ROUGE --  As he looked down and panned his hand over a scarred right knee, Southern center Aaron Hall reminiscently pointed out the injury that ended his season in late October and then for all of spring practice, pushing him in front of one of the biggest obstacles he would have to face.

“See all these cuts? I was cut in about six places,” Hall said of the scars left from the surgery that came as the result of a rare and traumatic injury for any athlete: tears in all three stabilizing knee ligaments, the medial collateral ligament, the posterior collateral ligament and the anterior cruciate ligament.

“When you get hit like that, you don’t even see it coming,” Hall said. “I was hit from the side. It was just a little pain, but I knew it was serious once I got up and I couldn’t put any weight on it. It just gave out.”

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Jaguars’ White ready to hit field for second shot

BATON ROUGE -- Just two years ago, Corey White was wrapping up his first collegiate fall camp in making final preparations for the top-five showdown between LSU and Oregon in the Cowboys Classic in Dallas.

Fast forward to present day, and once again White finds himself preparing for a trip to Texas, yet this time wearing blue and gold rather than purple and gold.

Currently in competition for Southern’s right guard position, White is entering his sophomore season for the Jaguars after transferring from LSU following the 2011 season.

“I talked to my parents about Southern,” White said in reference to the transfer. “My parents supported it, saying that it would be a good option for me. It would be close to home, and there would be a lot of support around me.”

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