UNIVERSITY PARK, Texas — One more win like Saturday’s 38-6 rout of Louisville — which recently sat 15th in the College Football Playoff rankings and came into Ford Stadium eight points shy of an undefeated season — and SMU could find itself in a situation unthinkable not so long ago.
One more win, and the Mustangs could be in the same place, figuratively speaking, as Amarillo, Caprock and Lubbock High when the fate of the three West Texas schools was determined this month by a coin flip at a Toot ‘n Totum in Plainview.
The ACC tiebreakers aren’t nearly as exotic as the UIL’s, but they’ve got more layers than the Tutankhamun dig.
Does anyone here know how they work?
“No, sir,” said a smiling Cam Robertson, the Mustangs’ senior defensive end.
How about you, Rhett Lashlee?
“I have a good idea of what they are,” he said.
“I think.”
Fortunately, the Dallas Morning News’ Lia Assimakopoulos has run all the numbers, which is good, because if I were any good at math, I’d have done something reputable for a living. From what Lia can tell, if SMU beats Cal next week and Virginia and Georgia Tech both win, it would go to the fourth tiebreaker, which is determined by winning percentage of ACC opponents.
Virginia holds the edge over SMU in conference opponent winning percentage, but, if any two of North Carolina State, Wake Forest and Miami beat North Carolina, Duke and Pitt — and each is favored — then it goes to a fifth tiebreaker.
Here’s where it gets fuzzy: An outfit called SportSource Analytics determines the fifth tiebreaker with its team rating score metric. Just don’t ask what the score is now. The information is available only on a subscription basis, and you have to be granted permission. When Lia emailed to inquire about signing up, she got no reply.
Seems to me the ACC should want a little transparency going into the last week of the regular season, especially with, oh, I don’t know, the free world hanging on the results.
In the absence of clarity from the league office, let me offer this: No ACC team is playing better lately than SMU, the lone remaining conference contender that hasn’t lost at least one game this month. Louisville, ranked 15th in the first CFP rankings, has now lost three in a row. Until Saturday, at least they’d come close. Only a three-point loss in overtime to Cal and a one-point heartbreaker against Clemson.
The Mustangs clobbered the Cardinals. Kevin Jennings threw for 303 yards and three touchdowns and ran for another, and the defense held Louisville to 228 yards of offense, just 100 passing. Now, it’s true that Louisville was missing its starting quarterback, Miller Moss, as well as its leading rusher and another running back, and the Cardinals lost a receiver in the third quarter. But the fill-in at QB, Deuce Adams, a four-star freshman, was the guy who kept North Texas’ Drew Mestemaker from starting at Austin Vandergrift, and all Mestemaker has done since is resurrect the hopes of the Mean Green fan base, dead for at least five decades.
Besides, the story of any season is what shape you’re in once November rolls around. Since an inexplicable 13-12 loss to Wake Forest on Oct. 25, the Mustangs have played their best football, upsetting 10th-ranked Miami, plowing Boston College and dominating Louisville.
When the AP Poll comes out Sunday, SMU could find itself back in the Top 25 for the first time since dropping out after an overtime loss to Baylor in its second game on Sept. 6.
Frankly, I was in Fort Worth two weeks later when the Mustangs lost to TCU, 35-24. And it wasn’t that close. SMU’s defense looked dreadful. Over the course of a season, though, teams evolve one direction or another. The Horned Frogs have gotten worse, much to Sonny Dykes’ dismay.
SMU, on the other hand, is a break or two from playing in the ACC title game for the second year in a row.
The recipe for the Mustangs’ strong finish, Lashlee said, comes from his first season as head coach. A group of players told him they wanted to go out on a high note. Me, too, Lashlee said. They told him he didn’t get it. They’d never won in November. Lashlee looked it up, and, sure enough, since 2009, they’d never had a winning record in the last month of the regular season.
“We went into November 4-4,” Lashlee said of the ‘22 season, “and we finished 3-1 in the month of November, went 7-5, beat Memphis at home to get that third win.
“We didn’t win a conference championship that year, but that group kind of set the tone.”
This SMU team, coming off a CFP berth in its first ACC season, needed time to grow, said senior receiver Jordan Hudson.
“The first couple of weeks, we were dead,” Hudson said. “We didn’t know who we were. We didn’t have any identity as a team. So I feel like Rhett did a great job with just allowing the captains to be captains, letting us be with each other, getting with the younger guys, just making sure we all on the same page.”
Next thing you knew, their growing pains were over.
“I’m thankful for ours being earlier in the season,” Robertson said.
No question, timing is everything in life and football. Maybe even in the algorithms of the SportSource Analytics computer, too. If it comes down to a coin flip, I got first dibs on choosing the gas station.
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