Conference USA Week 5 Recap

WEEK FIVE REVIEW

SCORES

Houston 49, UTEP 42

Army 45, Tulane 6

Marshall 17, Louisville 13

SMU 40, TCU 33

Tulsa 41, North Texas 24

Middle Tennessee 38, Memphis 31

Troy 24, UAB 23

Southern Mississippi 48, Rice 24

North Carolina 35, East Carolina 20

The big story of week five in Conference USA might not have rated as a massive upset, but it certainly proved to be a significant one. The Southern Methodist Mustangs, so thoroughly embarrassed by Texas A&M in week one, muddled through the rest of September without a particularly convincing display. The defending West Division champions in C-USA needed to make a statement, and boy, did they ever on the first afternoon of October. The Ponies marched from their campus in suburban Dallas and made the very short trek to Fort Worth to play old Southwest Conference rival Texas Christian. SMU wobbled in the fourth quarter, but it owned just enough resilience to stave off the Horned Frogs in an overtime thriller. SMU took advantage of TCU's penchant for slow starts, racing to a 27-10 lead against the reigning Rose Bowl champions before a stunned crowd of Frog fans. TCU's leaky secondary was eviscerated by the Mustangs and head coach June Jones, who found an ideal set of matchups and continuously exploited them.

TCU didn't go 13-0 last season for nothing; coach Gary Patterson's Horned Frogs struck for 23 points in the fourth quarter, scoring in the final two minutes of regulation to force overtime at 33-all. However, SMU regrouped in the extra session, shrugging off its defensive collapse and earning the biggest win for the program in quite some time. The Mustangs got the ball first in overtime and promptly scored, throwing all the pressure onto the shoulders of young TCU quarterback Casey Pachall. The first-year signal caller for the Frogs was unable to lead his TCU teammates into the end zone, and the upset had been sealed. TCU still hasn't lost a conference game, but it's plain that the Frogs will suffer through this year of transition. They're simply too young at too many important positions.

SMU, of course, won't shed tears for TCU at all. The Mustangs immensely elevated their profile in the college football world.

Beyond SMU's shining moment, the larger pattern found in C-USA this past weekend was that the league's hierarchy was basically affirmed. Lower-tier teams - UTEP, Tulane, Memphis, UAB and Rice - all lost. East Carolina fell to North Carolina, but the Pirates were punching above their weight class when they took on an ACC foe. For the most part, the league's upper half - in the East and West Divisions - took care of business. Houston, Tulsa, and Southern Miss all delivered the goods in addition to SMU. Marshall, a team that was hard to get a read on before the season started, has seemingly announced that it wants to be part of the upper class and not the lower class in C-USA. The Thundering Herd, who battled hard against West Virginia and Virginia Tech in September, had already knocked off Southern Miss in 2011. Now, the Herd can claim another valuable scalp - that of the Louisville Cardinals. Marshall flexed its muscles on defense and dug out a four-point win on UL's home turf in Bluegrass Country. The win should give Marshall wings heading into the teeth of the C-USA schedule. Marshall's encouraging start means that C-USA East should feature a vigorous four-team competition: East Carolina, Central Florida, and Southern Miss will all jockey with MU for positioning in which should be a fascinating race to the conference championship game.