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I bought the Sporting News preview this weekend. They predicted that SMU would finish fourth in the CUSA West (behind UTEP, Tulsa, Houston). They have our "must win" game as the Houston game. It said we might be capable of winning six games--as this poster has also argued. I would have put the Tulane game as our "must win" if we are gonna get to six wins. The author is Michael Murphy of the Houston Chronicle.

They rated our recruiting class the worst in CUSA. The note stated that we only got two prospects (Burley & McCann) with other significant offers.

If we only win 6 it is a step back from last year

GoRedGoBlue wrote:If we only win 6 it is a step back from last year

We only won 5 last year. Your math chip must need replacing.

With our players, we need to win four games (SHSU, Ark. St., UNT, Rice). Six wins would be great. We have recently been outrecruited by some Sun Belt teams (Troy St. for Haugabook) so those games are critically important. If anyone of those games is lost, the season is done unless we pull off some major upsets.

I think we must win that d-2 game at all costs. Put all our prep into beating that d-2 team we play. If we lose that game, the situation is hopeless.

So losing to Rice would make a win over UAB or UTEP or Houston meaningless?

Beat Tech!

jtstang wrote:

GoRedGoBlue wrote:If we only win 6 it is a step back from last year

We only won 5 last year. Your math chip must need replacing.

Buddha wrote:So losing to Rice would make a win over UAB or UTEP or Houston meaningless?

Beat Tech!

Rice has option players for a new passing attack. They are gonna be bad.

[quote="jtstang"]I think we must win that d-2 game at all costs. Put all our prep into beating that d-2 team we play. If we lose that game, the situation is hopeless.[/quote]

There is no D-2 game.

McClown27 wrote:

Buddha wrote:So losing to Rice would make a win over UAB or UTEP or Houston meaningless?

Beat Tech!

Rice has option players for a new passing attack. They are gonna be bad.

I hope you're right. But as has been pointed out here many times, they have a staff that has proven it can recruit seriously talented players, and I expect it's only a matter of time before they collect some good ones down I-45.

They are already recruiting better than us. They got that QB we wanted.

They got one of several QBs we were recruiting.

jtstang wrote:

GoRedGoBlue wrote:If we only win 6 it is a step back from last year

We only won 5 last year. Your math chip must need replacing.

Jstang, please think about my comment in a little more depth before blasting me for the obvious...

OUT OF CONFERENCE
We play one Div-1aa team (SHSU) and two lower-end Div-1 teams (UNT, ArkSt). That's three FREE wins (NOTE: we had absolutely NO free wins last year and went 5-6).

To illustrate: instead of TCU, aTm, and Baylor (1-2), we instead play UNT, SHSU, TECH, ArkSt (3-1). Even if you say Ark State is a decent team, they are worse than ANY team of the three we played last year. You could argue that we should have gone 0-3 last year, or even 1-2 with a win over BU, and therefore 2-2 is somehow an improvement over last year.

It certainly is not.

LET'S PUT THE MATH TOGETHER
Now, if we win 6 games, that would mean that we went 3-5 in CUSA play (plus a loss to Tech for 3-6, plus our wonderful 3 free wins).

3-5 in CUSA is, in fact, LOWER than the 4-4 record that we went LAST year (4-4 in CUSA, plus TCU, minus aTm and BU = 5-6).

6-6 is a GIANT step backwards in my opinion based upon THIS year's competition. Surely you don't expect 2-2 and 4-4 to be somehow breaking 'even' with our very weak OOC schedule.

7-5 is breaking even. That's 7-5 (4-4,3-1).

PB will be fired for 6-6, and might get fired for 7-5 depending on the losses and wins (and when the come, etc.).

GoRedGoBlue wrote:
PB will be fired for 6-6, and might get fired for 7-5 depending on the losses and wins (and when the come, etc.).

There is no way Coach Bennett gets fired if we win 5 or more games.

Please explain to me the scenario where we go 7-5 and Phil gets fired. If we are going to lose to team like UNT then it is rather improbable that we will beat Tulsa or Houston--I admit it is not impossible.

GoRedGoBlue wrote:We play one Div-1aa team (SHSU) and two lower-end Div-1 teams (UNT, ArkSt). That's three FREE wins

BS. This team lost last year to Baylor, TULANE (post-Katrina, in a game that wasn't even close), ECU, and Marshall in what were supposed to be easy wins. There is no such thing as a free win for SMU. In fact, I suspect one of those free wins you mention may turn out to be a loss, but I hope not.