Florida Atlantic (7-5) vs. Memphis (7-5)
Florida Atlantic's the surprise champion of the Sun Belt conference, earning their way here by beating Troy, who had dominated the league all year. The Owls are a bit of a conundrum - they have the upset win over Minnesota, which, even though it's Minnesota, is a Sun Belt team beating a BCS conference team, and FAU hung in there against South Florida in the middle of the season. But when you look at their conference games, outside of their season-opening win against Middle Tennessee State, all their wins weren't really that impressive. On the year statistically, there's not much inspiring there - the offense is pretty good, the defense is below-average. And hey, Miami architect (of the Hurricanes program, not an actual architect) Howard Schnellenberger is their coach - that's neat.
Memphis is even less inspiring. The Tigers actually have a top 25 offense, but a very poor defense, and that 7-5 record about says it all. They're a slightly above-average Conference USA team, better than the UABs, SMUs, and Marshalls of the conference, if not appreciably so most of the time. Martin Hankins is a solid quarterback, completing about 61% for 2939 yards on the year. Exciting stuff.
Troy winning the Sun Belt might've made this game more interesting, although the Trojans would likely project out to be a demonstratably better team than Memphis. As it is, I'm kind of down on FAU - a Sun Belt team really needs to be appreciably better than the rest of the conference, and the Owls aren't that. This could be a fun little shootout, but bank on Memphis being the one to put up more points.
My Pick: Memphis
Confidence (out of 5): 3
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