View the complete 2019-2020 bowl game schedule here
Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, TX
Time: Thursday, January 3 at 11:30am ET
TV: ESPN
Southern Miss Golden Eagles (7-5) vs. Tulane Green Wave (6-6)
Two teams from roughly the same neck of the woods (or Gulf) take a trip up to Fort Worth.
Vegas line/spread: Tulane by 7 (over/under 56.5)
Strength power rating: #47 Tulane 34, #85 Southern Miss 23
Adjusted for turnovers: Tulane 35-26
Median game rating: Tulane 38-21
Road play rating: Tulane 29-20
The Strength power rating thinks pretty highly of Tulane, and not so highly of Southern Miss, putting the Wave in the top 50 and the Eagles in the bottom 50 (of 130 FBS teams). This leads to an 11-point margin, which can be adjusted for various reasons but one interesting one is median rating: Tulane gains a lot, while Southern Miss falls, resulting in a 17-point spread. Or it shrinks to 9 points when we look at road play, where both teams are lousy but Tulane much lousier. Vegas has a pretty standard 7 point spread, favoring the Wave quite a bit less than we do.
| Game-comparisons | win % | vs. -7 Spread |
| Southern Miss | 21% | 34% |
| Tulane | 79% | 66% |
Tulane wins 4 of 5 game comparisons straight up, and still about 2 of 3 against a one-touchdown spread.
When Southern Miss has the ball
| Southern Miss scoring offense: #94 |
Tulane scoring defense: #60 |
| Southern Miss total offense: #62 |
Tulane total defense: #54 |
| Southern Miss rushing offense: #109 |
Tulane rushing defense: #57 |
| Southern Miss passing offense: #23 |
Tulane passing defense: #42 |
Southern Miss gains an average amount of yardage (total offense) but has trouble converting that to points, as their #94 scoring offense attests. Their problem is turnovers, where they rank #119 in turnover margin. QB Jack Abraham (3,329 yards, 18 TDs) leads the top 25 worthy Eagle passing attack; if he could cut down on the 15 interceptions they'd be even better. Tulane's defense is pretty average, and they don't get a lot of picks themselves so maybe Southern Miss will have a good day through the air, which would help since they aren't much of a rushing threat.
When Tulane has the ball
| Tulane scoring offense: #41 |
Southern Miss scoring defense: #74 |
| Tulane total offense: #20 |
Southern Miss total defense: #52 |
| Tulane rushing offense: #8 |
Southern Miss rushing defense: #56 |
| Tulane passing offense: #90 |
Southern Miss passing defense: #106 |
Contrasting Southern Miss' air attack is Tulane's ground game. The Wave reside in the top ten, post-adjustment for opposition, in rushing yards per game. Like the Eagles, they're pretty one-dimensional. QB Justin McMillan leads the team with 704 yards (net, after subtracting 173 sack yards), with four more running backs each topping 300 yards (two are questionable for the game). All told, Tulane runs the ball nearly twice for each pass attempt. Southern Miss' defense is about like Tulane's: average. They're bad against the pass, but that's not their main worry here.
Special Teams rank (from ESPN FPI): Southern Miss #23 Tulane #85
One area where Southern Miss might catch up is special teams, where they outrank the Wave considerably according to ESPN's FPI.
Southern Miss's season (7-5)
Wins vs. bowl-eligible teams (1)
Wins vs. top 25 teams (0)
Losses (5) to losing teams (0)
- Alcorn St 38-10
- @Mississippi St 15-38
- @Troy 47-42
- @#13 Alabama 7-49
- UTEP 31-13
- North Texas 45-27
- @Louisiana Tech 30-45
- @Rice 20-6
- UAB 37-2
- @UTSA 36-17
- Western Kentucky 10-28
- @Florida Atlantic 17-34
This chart shows why Southern Miss's median rating is so much lower than their mean rating—the presence of several upside outliers, especially the 37-2 (yes, that's the real score) win over UAB, the only bowl-bound team they beat. Their losses were generally sordid affairs, even if the teams they lost to were all pretty good. And that's the thing: the Golden Eagles only beat bad teams. Alcorn State is in the FCS, and Troy, UTEP, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA rank #106, 127, 109, 115, 103, and 124 in Strength. Against teams in the triple digits, the Eagles play well, at least well enough to win. They played poorly against the other teams, who all rank 89th or above. This is not good news to hear before playing the #47 ranked team.
Tulane's season (6-6)
Wins vs. bowl-eligible teams (1)
Wins vs. top 25 teams (0)
Losses (6) to losing teams (0)
- Florida Int'l 42-14
- @#12 Auburn 6-24
- Missouri St 58-6
- Houston 38-31
- @Army 42-33
- Connecticut 49-7
- @#17 Memphis 17-47
- @#23 Navy 38-41
- Tulsa 38-26
- @Temple 21-29
- Central Florida 31-34
- @SMU 20-37
Tulane's 6-6 season doesn't sound that great, and they only beat one bowl team. But look who they lost to: #12 Auburn, #17 Memphis, and #23 Navy, as well as 8-4 Temple, 9-3 UCF, and 10-2 SMU. And half those losses were pretty impressive: they lost by 18 at Auburn, by 3 at Navy, and by 3 to UCF. The other three losses are the performances that, when computing the median, vanish while the rest of their consistent body of work remains. The three bad games were also all on the road, leading to Tulane's terrible road-game rating. Tulane started 5-1, and finished 1-5, but looking at their schedule that's nothing to be ashamed of.
Psychology/Motivation - Some speculative factors that may come into play during the game:
- Southern Miss's season: +1 win; Tulane's season: +0 wins
- Southern Miss's momentum: -1 win; Tulane's momentum: -4 wins
- Southern Miss glad to be here? yes; Tulane glad to be here: yes
- Southern Miss time zones from home: 0; Tulane time zones from home: 0;
- Southern Miss coaching situation: unchanged; Tulane coaching situation: unchanged
Not much to see here except what we already saw: Tulane starting the season 5-1, then suffering a 1-5 finish. We noted above that it was the result of their back-loaded schedule, but losing 5 of 6 is still losing 5 of 6 no matter how you slice it. On the other hand, both teams finished on a losing streak, so Southern Miss isn't immune from feeling dejected about the end of the season. Still, we posit that both teams are glad to be at this bowl: Southern Miss because they didn't go bowling last year despite qualifying at 6-5; and Tulane because they probably want to prove they are better than their 6-6 record (at least, they should be motivated by this!).
Final analysis
Tulane played very well, and very consistently, in the first half of the season. In the 2nd half many of their performances faltered as they went 1-5. Is there a reason to discount their earlier play, and assume their performances in the last 6 games are more representative of what we will see during the bowl game? Maybe, but looking at the teams they played in those 3 games I'm not sure it's warranted. If they were playing poorly both winning and losing, home and road, against good teams and bad, then yes, you could probably say they took a step down. Instead, all three games were to very good teams and all were on the road.
But will going 1-5 in their last 6 games be a psychological drag on the team? In the past we've looked at a lot of bowl games, and we figured that the teams that finished 1-5—or even 0-6—were struggling in the 2nd half and disappointed at how the season turned out. Amazingly, most of these teams did very well in their bowl games. What's the explanation? It could be that the big break between the end of season and bowl game led to re-evaluation and a new attitude, or that they felt they had nothing to lose after their season turned out so poorly. And some of those teams didn't really play any worse, they just lost a bunch of games. So we don't know what to make of Tulane's slump, except that it might not apply at all to a game against Southern Miss.
We noted how Southern Miss only beat teams that ranked below #100 in Strength, and had poor outings against teams at their own level or higher. Now let's turn to Tulane. The Wave lost to six good teams, but did they beat any good teams? Or at least, any teams ranked as high as Southern Miss? FIU ranks #110, Houston is #60, Army #87, UConn #125, and Tulsa 59. So the answer is yes: they beat Army, who is rated roughly as high as Southern Miss, and Houston and Tulsa, who are well above. Meanwhile the closest teams Southern Miss played to Tulane's level are #40 Mississippi State and #39 Florida Atlantic.
Let's just average all those game performances together for each and I think it will give an indication of how the teams will do against each other. We get 19 points. Pretty close to the median's 17 point estimate. See, we could have just consulted the median rather than doing all that work.
Prediction: Tulane 39, Southern Miss 20
More previews, odds, and predictions: View the complete 2019-2020 bowl game schedule.
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