SMU’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference hasn’t slowed down the Mustangs at all.
SMU has won 13 straight league games – including all eight last year in its final American Athletic Conference season. Now in their new league, the Mustangs (7-1, 4-0) are one of four teams left with a perfect ACC record, a number that will go down after this weekend’s matchup with Pittsburgh (7-0, 3-0).
“We knew we had a team we felt like could compete, and that was our goal,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said. “Let’s just go out and prove we belong, prove we can compete, and then we’re going to learn a lot about ourselves and how we measure up and where we stand. And our guys have taken that mindset.”
The ACC eliminated its Atlantic and Coastal divisions last year, sending the top two teams overall to the conference championship game. The expansion to 17 teams this season added SMU, California and Stanford, but only the Mustangs have had an impact.
As the college football season heads into its final full month, the ACC race is coming down to four schools – all without a league loss: No. 20 SMU, No. 18 Pitt, No. 11 Clemson and No. 5 Miami. Virginia Tech has one loss in the conference, and four schools have two.
“Yes, Miami’s having a great year. Yes, Clemson’s acting like Clemson,” said Lashlee, whose team lost to Boston College in last year's Fenway Bowl when the Mustangs were still in the American. “But there’s a bunch of teams in contention to go to the bowl and there’s still six or seven teams that are not out of the hunt for the conference with one month to play.”
Miami and Pitt are unbeaten. Clemson has lost only to then-No. 1 Georgia in the season opener, and SMU lost to still-unbeaten BYU on Sept. 6.
An unbeaten ACC champion is all-but certain to reach the 12-team College Football Playoff.
“This is the time teams and players start to get a little down because it’s the middle of the season and guys are getting tired and feeling sorry for themselves,” Clemson running back Phil Mafah said. “But this is the time where we’ve really got to lock in and focus on what we want to do. Because we worked so hard the past 10 months to focus on this moment and the moment’s here.”
The Nov. 16 matchup between Pitt and Clemson could eliminate another team from the ACC unbeatens. But first, the Saturday night showdown in Dallas against the Panthers looms for SMU in its impressive debut season.
“Knowing the league, I did believe we could compete. I didn’t know to what level, and we’ve still got a month left to prove it,” said Lashlee, who was the offensive coordinator at Miami for two seasons. “You know, are we going to be able to hang in there week to week with the physicality, and everything that’s kind of starting to take a toll on us? But we felt like we had a team that could compete and it helped me knowing the league to feel that way.”
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said he has never coached a game at SMU but he remembers watching the Mustangs when Eric Dickerson led the Southwestern Conference in rushing in back-to-back years, gaining more than 3,000 yards on the ground in 1981-82.
“That guy was a dude,” Narduzzi said. “It’s good to have a good football team in the conference, good coaches, and I’m looking forward to going down to Dallas and seeing what they’ve got down there.”
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AP Sports Writers Pete Iacobelli, Aaron Beard, Stephen Hawkins and Will Graves contributed to this story.
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