WKU Football: Toppers Draw UAB, Southern Miss in Cross-Divisional Play
On Wednesday, Conference USA announced the cross-division alignment for the next two years for each team in the league.
On Wednesday, Conference USA announced the cross-division alignment for the next two years for each team in the league.
The Hilltoppers drew a bit of a tough-luck, but somewhat necessary, draw as they’ll face Southern Miss and UAB for the next two seasons to finish out conference play.
The thinking here isn’t unreasonable for why the Toppers will get the Blazers and Golden Eagles — the Tops haven’t faced UAB since the program was reinstated, and their matchup this year will be the first since 2014, while Southern Miss and WKU have yet to face off in the regular season as conference mates (though they have met once since the Tops joined C-USA, with WKU claiming a conference victory over them in 2015).
With these series set, the Tops will have faced off against every C-USA west team as a regular season series.
While I’m excited to play Southern Miss and UAB, two teams that not only are competitive year in and year out and will have solid fan support in Bowling Green (and, depending on how quick the turnaround is for Tyson Helton, Green or Gold could outnumber Red in Smith Stadium), there’s one downside to this — this means the Hilltoppers series, which has been an annual cross-division one up to this point, with Louisiana Tech has, for the time being, subsided.
Upon Helton’s hiring, I said eight wins wasn’t impossible in his first year. We now know what the teams that’ll compose the schedule looks like.
vs. Central Arkansas (8/31)
vs. Louisville (9/14)
vs. Army (10/12)
at Arkansas (11/9)
at Marshall
vs. Charlotte
at ODU
vs. MTSU
at FIU
vs. FAU
vs. UAB
at Southern Miss
It won’t be an easy road to hoe, with two P5’s, a very good Army and two West front runners on the schedule, but it’ll at least be a very good challenge in Helton’s first year at the helm.