Siegel: It’s not as bad as it might look

Playing on Thursday instead of Saturday gave head coach Kevin Sumlin a chance to catch some of the other action happening around college football.

“You watch the games Saturday and everybody’s scoring 30-something points,” he said.

Of the 36 teams that played in the 18 games involving ranked teams, 21 of them cracked the 30-point mark.

In Conference USA, six of the 11 teams in action scored more than 30 points.

The Cougars allow an average of 413.4 yards per game, the 28th most in the NCAA. They also give up an average of 22.2 first downs per game. They allow plenty of big plays. But surprisingly, they have one of the better defenses in C-USA.

“We’re fourth in the league in scoring defense at 26 points a game,” Sumlin said. “Seems crazy, but that’s where our league is.”

Of course, it would be nice to get more stops, but the Cougars aren’t the Crimson Tide and it doesn’t seem like any of the other schools in C-USA have dramatically better defenses.

The Cougars however have created the second-most turnovers in C-USA (11), which has helped cover some of their blemishes, particularly against the run.

“When you start looking at total numbers, I think you have to be careful with total defense and total offense,” Sumlin said. “I look at points.

“The name of the game, particularly for us, it’s points per game and defensive points per game.”

And even if the 56-0 Georgia State massacre is removed from the equation, UH is allowing 33.3 points per game, while scoring a rather healthy 42.5 points per game.

Opponents have only converted on 25-of-70 (35.7 percent) third down attempts.

“I think that when we sit down at the beginning of the year, the things that we wanted to get better at primarily were our third down percentage and we needed to improve our rush defense,” Sumlin said.

“I think our third down percentage has come down, but our rush defense is nowhere near where it needs to be.”

It would be great to hold teams like Florida to 10 points in a game, but UH isn’t Alabama, nor is that a realistic goal right now.

Most important is that the Cougars have come away with five wins in five weeks and have a chance to host and win the C-USA Championship.