Ponies' Casey Woods: Experiences Showed in Win Over Tigers

Offensive coordinator never was particularly worried because of SMU's experience

DALLAS — Through a tight first half against Memphis last Saturday, there was no panic from SMU. That didn't particularly surprise offensive coordinator Casey Woods, which is what experienced teams do.

"We have a really mature football team," he said Tuesday. "They've displayed that throughout. Sometimes you just get in a rhythm and we're kind of in a rhythm right now."

The overall picture shows an 8-2 record with losses to TCU and Oklahoma. The Mustangs played with both tight on the road until things got out of hand late. Those lessons may have been the difference last week. Now they face Navy, and need it to pay off more. A win puts them in the AAC title game the next week.

"They know the stakes of this weekend," Woods said. "The most important thing we can do for our program in the immediate is beat Navy. Obviously, they're going to come in here ready to play. We had a chance to play them last year and they gave us some trouble in a lot of situations. Outside of seven or eight explosives, they presented some problems for us defensively."

Having an experienced quarterback makes it easier and Preston Stone showed how much he's grown this year. After a first half where the Ponies ran the ball a lot, they went to the air in the second half for a 38-34 win.

"Preston certainly being the main face and the leader of our offense," Woods said. "He's playing at a good level right now. We just keep bringing him along and putting him in positions to help us win, the best kinds of quarterbacks out there in college football are the ones that don't turn it over and the ones that don't take sacks and he doesn't do either of those. We can keep working with that."

The Mustangs and Midshipmen kick off at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning on ESPN2 and fuboTV. You can hear the game in Dallas on The Ticket 96.7 f.m. and 1310 a.m. Listen online from anywhere here.

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