After blowing out USF on the road in its American Athletic Conference opener, the SMU Mustangs are ranked No. 24 in the AP Top 25 Poll after receiving votes in last week's poll. SMU is 5-0 for the first time since 1983 and ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time since Oct. 25, 1986, when the Mustangs were No. 18. SMU is receiving votes in the Coaches Poll, which was also released Sunday.

SMU jumped into the Top 25 and landed ahead of Texas A&M, who sits at No. 25 and hung on to beat Arkansas on Saturday. Cal and Michigan State both dropped out of the Top 25 while Memphis remained receiving votes. UCF, which moved up to No. 18, is the other AAC team in the AP Top 25. The complete poll can be viewed here.

SMU used a fast-start against USF to race out to a 34-0 first half lead over the Bulls. On the season, SMU is outscoring opponents in the first half, 122-43 and outgaining them, 1,404-624. Quarterback Shane Buechele credited SMU's tempo for the fast start for himself and the offense.

"That's how we want our offense to be," Buechele said after the game. "We kind of want to be bang-bang, you don't really know what's going on and when we're going with tempo, we do a really good job of mixing it up so it was good for us to start fast with Zay (Xavier Jones) and then start fast on the outside too."

On the flip side, SMU's defense set a program record for sacks in a game with 10 while tallying 13 tackles for loss and forcing two turnovers. It was the 16th straight game SMU had forced a turnover, which is key for the Mustangs, and helped the team to the 48-21 win.

"I thought our defense played lights out in the first half," head coach Sonny Dykes said after the win. "I thought they really really played well. Had a couple short fields and they were able to get em stopped and saw some good things defensively today. I think 10 sacks, that's obviously a pretty special night when you sack the quarterback 10 times. I don't know if we had 10 sacks last year."

Dykes said after the game that while his team is 5-0 and playing for bowl eligibility against Tulsa in Dallas the first weekend of October, his team felt they'd be in a position like this with the talent. Now the Mustangs have to take care of business against the Golden Hurricane, who ruined SMU's chances at bowl eligibility last season.

"Yea, we thought coming out of fall camp we had a chance to have a good football team and that's what we have," Dykes told reporters Saturday. "We got a chance to. We've won five games now and we've got seven left and so the thing we have to do is just continue to practice hard and get better. We play a Tulsa team that beat us last year, knocked us out of a bowl game. It's home. We're home the next two weeks so I'm happy where we are right now, but we're going to be better hopefully next week."

Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. CT on Saturday on ESPNU from Gerald J. Ford Stadium. SMU leads the all-time series against Tulsa, 14-11.

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