G5 Week Three Mailbag

This week's mailbag talks about undefeated possibilities, surprise teams, injuries, and conference power rankings. Send in your questions to adcock.jeremy@yahoo.com or on twitter @cfoutpost and I will answer your G5 queries.

Best shot at an undefeated season?  And why is it WKU?

Surprise, surprise... It's not WKU.

Let's first look at the teams that are still in contention for an undefeated season. The AAC has six in Temple, Connecticut, Houston, Memphis, Navy, and Tulsa. Conference USA has three: WKU, Charlotte, and Old Dominion. BYU is the only undefeated G5 independent. The MAC has three: Ohio, Toledo, and Northern Illinois. Air Force is the only Mountain West team that is still undefeated.

I can go ahead and knock out UConn (at Missouri), Tulsa (at Oklahoma), Charlotte (at MTSU), Old Dominion (at NC State), BYU (at UCLA), Northern Illinois (at Ohio State), and Air Force (at Michigan State) from contention this week. Wow, that only leaves seven teams undefeated after week three.

Temple should cruise until a Halloween matchup with Notre Dame. Despite the Golden Domers sustaining injury after injury, I think this is where the undefeated streak for Temple ends. If not then, UCF or Memphis will knock them off. Houston could make it to the final four games of their regular season, but are not beating Cincinnati, Memphis, and Navy in a four week stretch. Memphis will see their hopes of undefeated end on October 17 with a visit from Ole Miss. Navy will fall versus either Air Force or Notre Dame, but if they are somehow undefeated at that point, they still have road games versus Memphis and Houston. They will not win both.

WKU is an interesting prospect. The Hilltoppers have a good schedule and should be undefeated heading to LSU, unless Indiana gets them this week. I do not think I am quite ready to pull the upset alarm for WKU over LSU. I think they stumble there. I believe that Minnesota ends Ohio's undefeated run in late September.

That leaves one team. Toledo. The Rockets have gotten past their toughest game of the season, a trip to Arkansas. As long as they take care of business versus Iowa State, they are in perfect position for an undefeated season. They get NIU and WMU at home, but have to face NIU, CMU, Bowling Green, and WMU in the final four weeks of the season. That will not be easy to do, but Toledo can pull it off.

So, I see Toledo as the only undefeated G5 team and gate crashers for a New Year's Day bowl this season.

Who is your surprise team so far?

Good Surprise: Charlotte. The 49ers beat Georgia State in their season opener, which is a good job, but they did it while committing five turnovers. Charlotte has not been afraid of FBS competition and should give quite a few CUSA teams more of a challenge than expected. While I see the 49ers going 2-10 this season, that is still more wins than I thought they would have going into the year.

Bad Surprise: Utah State: Anyone that pays attention to college football knows that Utah State has a nasty defense. All that is needed is something, anything, offensively to win games. Well, nothing good has happened on offense with Keeton struggling to find his pre-injury form. The Aggies are only 1-1 but have looked bad in the process with a terrible game versus Southern Utah and looked better versus Utah so maybe this team can still be what everyone expected this season.

Seems alot of injuries early for some teams so how will it affect #CUSA?

Injuries to WKU's Leon Allen and UTEP's Aaron Jones have been the two biggest injuries that can affect the CUSA as a whole. With Allen, WKU is a top level offense that can score on anyone and even put a scare into some of the best P5 teams in the nation. Without Allen, the Hilltoppers don't have that explosiveness at the running back position. Backup Anthony Wales should be back in the coming weeks after sustaining preseason injury, but until then, redshirt freshman D'Andre Ferby will be the man with Indiana transfer Anthony Davis also getting carries.

Jones going down for UTEP is even more catastrophic as he was the team leader in rushing and receiving. Football is a next man up game, but asking anyone to step in and replace Jones is asking a lot. The second leading rusher on the team has 19 yards rushing, only 190 fewer than Jones. This single injury could end up knocking the Miners out of bowl contention.

G5 conference power rankings? I'm thinking AAC, CUSA, MAC, MWC, SBC so far.

My current G5 conference power rankings are:

1. AAC: Six teams still undefeated. Even with UCF looking bad so far this season, the conference as a whole looks excellent.
2. CUSA: The conference as a whole struggled in week two, but WKU, Louisiana Tech, MTSU, and Rice look like good programs this season. The jury is still out on Marshall and Old Dominion, home of the nation's leading rusher Ray Lawry. 
3. MWC: A Hail Mary falls to the ground and the MWC is right behind the AAC. The West Division looks wide open with San Diego State the favorites. SDSU is coming off of a disappointing 35-7 loss to Cal. The East division still looks good, but the only team in the division to win in week two was Air Force.
4. MAC: This is a very top heavy conference with Toledo, Bowling Green, and Northern Illinois at the top. After that, you get to CMU and disappointing teams WMU and UMass. The rest of the conference is just not all that good. 
5. Sun Belt: Every other G5 conference has won a game over a P5 team other than the Sun Belt. Louisiana was the only team that had a real shot at a win after a masterful week one comeback. The only impressive win of the season from the conference is a Georgia Southern win over Western Michigan.