There’s been an America’s team declaration by a team in Dallas.
“America saw SMU belongs,” Mustangs coach Rhett Lashlee said Sunday on ESPN. “We’re a team that has a chance to compete for this championship. To some degree, I think we’re a little bit of America’s team after this.”
SMU, as the No. 11 seed, will face No. 6 seed Penn State in the first round of the playoff later this month. The Mustangs got the final spot over Alabama; The Crimson Tide was ranked No. 11, but because of automatic qualifiers as a result of winning conference championships, SMU ended up being the last team in, ranked No. 10.
SMU lost its conference championship game on a last-second field goal to Clemson. That was a close enough result to keep the Mustangs in the playoff, and then Alabama ultimately got bumped for Clemson, who snuck in as the automatic qualifier for the ACC.
SMU fought back from a colossal deficit to tie the game in the final minutes.
“If you look at the stat line, other than the two turnovers, we pretty much won every other piece of that ball game until the very end,” Lashlee said. “I think America saw what SMU is capable of … We are a team, if we play four good quarters of football like we have most of the time this year, we can go win at Penn State. We can win the next round. So on and so forth. It’s on us to make sure we don’t have a start like that here in a few weeks.”
Nick Kelly is an Alabama beat writer for AL.com and the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X and Instagram.
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Publish date : 2024-12-08 06:04:00
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