After two weeks of facing teams vying for a spot in the conference championship game, Tech's final opponent of the 2019 regular season won't be going to a bowl game. At 4-7, UTSA has struggled this year on both sides of the ball all season long. In eleven games, UTSA has allowed an average of 33.3 points per game (108th most nationally) while only scoring 19.7 per game (117th fewest nationally).
There are a lot of bad teams in the conference, but the Roadrunners stand out as one of the worst when it comes to the final numbers on the scoreboard:
The bottom four teams in C-USA this year are pretty separated from the rest. Each of those teams scored at least 10 fewer points per game than their opponent. But while Rice, ODU, and UTEP have four wins between them, UTSA has four on their own.
So let's take a look at each of UTSA's victories this year and see how the Roadrunners were able to over-perform in the win column. Because while Tech is favored by over 20 points at home this week, UTSA has shown it can find ways to win.
The first win was over FCS Incarnate Word, so I'm going to skip over it and go straight to Win #2.
UTSA Win #2: UTEP (26-16)
On the year, UTSA's rushing attack has been pretty typical. The Roadrunners have run the ball 38 times per game for 4.3 yards per carry, both of which are near the middle of the pack in college football.
But against the Miners, UTSA ran the ball 48 times at 6.7 yards per rush. That means the Roadrunners ran for 320 yards on the road.
Fortunately for the Bulldogs, Tech's run defense is a significant step up from UTEP's.
UTSA Win #3: Rice (31-27)
At first glance, these two teams had a very similar night. Both schools threw 29 passes for around 7.5 yards per attempt. UTSA ran the ball 30 times for 149 yards, while Rice ran in 35 times for 146 yards.
The difference in this game was turnovers. Both teams threw an interception, but the Owls fumbled the ball away three times. The final fumble came with 49 seconds left when Rice had the ball in UTSA territory.
Again, luckily for Tech, the Bulldogs have been able to protect the ball all year, and also have an NCAA-leading 15 straight games with a turnover:
UTSA Win #4: Old Dominion (24-23)
Going into the fourth quarter, the Monarchs were up 23-10 and it seemed like ODU would get their first FBS win of the season. The Roadrunners were able to put together back-to-back touchdown drives that each started inside their own 25.
Both of those scoring drives were over ten plays long, so it wasn't like ODU had one bad play with a busted coverage. Instead, UTSA moved the ball methodically and simply refused to lose.
Oh, and ODU had one last shot to retake the lead after UTSA's second fourth quarter touchdown, but fumbled the ball away.
Conclusion
UTSA has been able to win three different FBS games in three different ways: the run game, turnovers, and a resilience to go down quietly.
While Tech's run game has been solid enough, turnovers are often a crap-shoot, and the Roadrunners have shown that they won't accept defeat even late in the game.
Tech should win this game. But UTSA has aready found ways to win games they probably shouldn't have. So the question is: will the Roadrunners find a way to do it again?
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Nathan is also a contributor to gtpdd.dog, a lighthearted Louisiana Tech blog. Be sure to check out @gotechplsdntdie on Twitter.
