SMU will carry a bit of swagger and bravado into its game with rebuilding Stanford, but don’t think for a second the Mustangs will take anything for granted when the teams square off in an Atlantic Coast Conference dustup Saturday afternoon in Dallas.
The Mustangs (3-2, 1-0 ACC) look to build on a 31-18 home win over Syracuse last Saturday in their ACC opener. Kevin Jennings hit on 29 of 35 passes for 285 yards and touchdowns to four different receivers.
SMU bounced back from a road loss to crosstown rival TCU on Sept. 27 and looked a little like the Mustangs that were talented enough to earn a berth in the College Football Playoff last year. But it wasn’t easy. SMU led by 28 early in the fourth quarter, yet had to make plays down the stretch to secure the win. The Mustangs surrendered fourth-quarter leads in both of their losses this season — to Baylor and TCU — but eventually got the job done against Syracuse.
“You’ve got to accomplish confidence, and we did (by beating Syracuse),” said SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said. “Now we’ve been there and we can say, ‘No, we’ve done it,’ instead of ‘We almost did it.’ It doesn’t have to be pretty, but we finished. We got a double-digit win in conference. It was a big step for our team.”
The Cardinal (2-3, 1-1 ACC) hit the road after a needed bye week that followed a thrilling 30-29 come-from-behind home win over San Jose State on Sept. 27. Sedrick Irvin scored on a 1-yard run with 19 seconds left to lift Stanford to the win, but that couldn’t happen without Ben Gulbranson’s 34-yard pass to Caden High to convert a fourth-and-10 with just over a minute to play.
Gulbranson finished with 444 yards and two touchdown passes while CJ Williams hauled in 11 of those throws for 130 yards and High caught five for 110 yards. Gulbranson’s passing total was third most in school history, but second most in the game as San Jose State’s Walker Eget threw for 473 yards and three scores.
“We’ve got the utmost respect for SMU, but our focus is more on what we do and how we play,” Stanford interim coach Frank Reich said Monday. “We’re working on being a more consistent football team in all three phases. We’ve made good progress in some ways, but I still feel like we have a ways to go.”
It’s just the third all-time meeting between the teams. SMU won 40-10 last year in Palo Alto, Calif. The only other game between the Mustangs and Cardinal was in the 1936 Rose Bowl game, a 7-0 Stanford victory.
