South Florida is trying to avoid falling into the American Athletic Conference cellar.
Tulane will try to pull the Bulls into the cellar with it when the two teams meet Saturday in New Orleans.
USF (2-8, 1-5 AAC) has lost its last three games, but has managed to stay in second-to-last place, tied with Temple, just ahead of the Green Wave (1-9, 0-6) who have lost eight consecutive games.
“A lot of people outside this program and not in our locker room will look at our record and say, ‘Oh man, Tulane’s a 1-9 team,'” Green Wave linebacker Nick Anderson said. “But anybody watching the games knows that our record does not show who we really are.”
The Green Wave have lost to four teams that were ranked at the time they played them — Cincinnati, Oklahoma, Ole Miss and SMU.
Tulane had opportunities to win its last two games, losing a 10-7 fourth-quarter lead at UCF two weeks ago and missing a potential game-winning 26-yard field goal at the end of regulation and falling to Tulsa in overtime at home last Saturday.
“Everybody would like to scream and yell and go off,” coach Willie Fritz said of the near misses. “But it’s not going to do anything.”
USF fell behind No. 5 Cincinnati, 31-7, before scoring 14 straight then losing 45-28 at home last Friday.
“We put a lot into that game, and we really expected to go out and play better in the first half than we did,” coach Jeff Scott said. “We just dug too big of a hole.”
Scott took solace in how his team responded in the second half. It gained just 35 yards in the first half and gained 309 in the second half on its way to scoring the most points this season against a Bearcats defense that entered the game allowing just 14.9 points per game, the third lowest in the country.
But the Bulls’ defense couldn’t slow down the Bearcats offense. USF has allowed a total of 128 points during its losing streak.
“It’s frustrating,” Scott said. “We’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got two games to figure it out. We’re just too inconsistent in some of our alignments and executions defensively.”
Jaren Mangham has 15 rushing touchdowns this season, tied for second in school history and just three shy of the school record.
