This year's Hawaii Bowl features the Fresno State University Bulldogs of the Mountain West Conference against the Southern Methodist University Mustangs of Conference USA. Here is how the two teams stack up against each other using my NCAA FBS Production Model.
Fresno State at the end of the regular season finished at 9-3 playing against an average strength of schedule (barely). All of Fresno State's losses were to teams in the top quartile of the current NCAA FBS production rankings, and the Bulldogs most impressive win was against currently #47 ranked San Diego State. Fresno State (again in the NCAA FBS Production Model) currently ranks as the #8 team in the nation in terms of overall productivity, with the #8 ranked offense and the #23 ranked defense. This is truly a very good team that has been overlooked for the entire season.
Southern Methodist University (SMU) finished the regular season at 6-6. SMU's most impressive victory was against #38 Tulsa - who defeated Fresno State by one point. SMU least impressive outings were losses to currently ranked #79 Rice and #111 Tulane. Four of SMU's six victories were against teams currently ranked above 100 in the NCAA FBS Production Model. SMU is currently the #63 ranked team overall, with the #78 ranked offense and the #55 ranked defense.
As you can no doubt determine, according to the model, Fresno State is a vastly superior team and thus the model would "predict" that Fresno State will defeat SMU in today's Hawaii Bowl.
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