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It's that time of the week again: time for Pony NATE to break down this week's game — in this case, Thursday at Houston.

SMU is on top of the world, sitting at 7-0 and atop the American Athletic Conference standings. Boise State was ranked ahead of SMU, but the Broncos fell Saturday to BYU, which made SMU the highest-ranked non-Power Five team. Saturday could not have gone better for the Ponies, as Boise State’s loss gives SMU the inside track to the Group of Five New Year’s Six Bowl bid.

The No. 16 Mustangs are coming off a surprisingly dominant 45-21 win over a rock-solid Temple team. There was so much to love about how the Mustangs performed Saturday, because with TCU struggling, you could make a good argument that SMU really had not beaten a high-quality opponent. A dominant win over Temple greatly helped to change that narrative, and the train kept on rolling.

To continue reading this week's Pony NATE-tion column, CLICK HERE.

With last weeks Pony NATE-tion, I was concerned if the team would be caught up in the press.
The Big Head!

Temple is good and yes we stepped on them fast and hard.

Does this team have the focus to see the task ahead and not let up? Focus and Execute and we are pretty good.

With that said... I'm back to... From Nate's mouth to God's ears.

GO MUSTANGS

Nate doesn't miss so.

BUT...

I'm pretty nervous about this game. I don't think Houston's actual players who will be in the game are intentionally tanking (and I think Tune starts, not a walk on). They are having a down year, but it's still Houston and they would love nothing better than rain on our parade. We better come out focused, high energy and motivated to kick their [deleted] or we will get whipped. We played well against Temple because we were fresh and focused (but if Temple didn't have those drops, it would have been a very different game - that was bad execution on their part not anything forced from ours).

Beat the Coogs! Pony Up!!

We have beaten Houston teams in the past that were more talented than we were so yes, there is reason to be concerned because I think we are the more talented team this year. I do think our guys will come out playing hard for a national TV audience and will win this game.

Pointing out the Houston's safety has so many tackles as an individual strength is actually pointing out a problem. When you safety is leading your team in tackles that's not good. And we at SMU are well aware of it from the not too distant past.