These upcoming teams have many of their wins against the same teams we beat, or even worse teams. I watched, or tried to watch, the UAB / Charlotte game; worse than two high schools playing each other. I've seen Rice and UTSA and UTEP, and UNT (very bad defense, very bad); none of these teams are a bit better than the teams we've beat in conference; probably worse. The C-USA west is a real problem right now, no good teams that I've seen. It's one thing when they play each other, but then look at that vaunted UNT team when they played FAU; made them look like the Patriots from the Boston.
I can't understand why we think folks with like records against basically the same competition are that much better than us. With the exception of the FAU offense (there defense isn't very good right now), we are the high standard in this league. If we play like we can, we win it all. If we don't we've made some big mistakes along the way.