The FIU Panthers’ 2020 football schedule includes UCF. Here’s the rest of the outlook
FIU’s football team has made it to three straight bowl games for the first time in school history, but it is also coming off coach Butch Davis’ first losing season since he went 4-8 with North Carolina in 2007.
Against that backdrop, FIU (6-7 in 2019) announced its 2020 schedule, and it features perhaps the Panthers’ toughest test of the year in Week 2 — a trip to Orlando to play UCF, which is 35-4 over the past three seasons.
The rest of the non-conference schedule includes a season-opening visit from Jacksonville State; a Sept. 26 visit to Liberty; and an Oct. 24 trip to play the University of Massachusetts.
Jacksonville State, an FCS team, finished last season with three straight losses and a 6-6 record. FIU should be heavily favored in that game.
Liberty finished 8-5, playing in its first-ever bowl game and defeating Georgia Southern 23-16 in Orlando’s Cure Bowl.
FIU’s 2020 schedule also includes three games against teams that went 1-11 in 2019: Massachusetts, Old Dominion and Texas-El Paso.
When ESPN recently came out with its final “Bottom 10” rankings for 2019, three of FIU’s six wins this past season were against the worst four teams in the nation. Massachusetts was the worst, Texas-El Paso second-worst and Old Dominion fourth-worst on the ESPN list.
In other FIU football news:
▪ Pro Football Focus, which prides itself on using film study to make its selections, chose two FIU players — guard Dallas Connell and safety Dorian Hall – as first-team All-Conference USA selections.
▪ According to PFF, among guards with at least 300 snaps, Connell allowed the fewest pressures in the conference, four. His 1.1 pressure percentage tied him for the league lead. Connell’s college eligibility has expired.
▪ Hall, who will be a redshirt junior this coming season, earned PFF’s highest coverage grade among all safeties in Conference USA. He allowed just one touchdown pass all season. He grabbed one interception and dropped another.
▪ FIU’s quarterback recruit for the Class of 2020, Haden Carlson, wasn’t ranked among Tampa’s top 50 players before the 2019 season started.
The three Tampa QBs ranked ahead of him by Friday Night Football magazine were Tucker Gleason, who signed with Georgia Tech; Rent Montie (Lafayette); and Isaiah Knowles (Navy).
But Carlson rose to prominence among FIU recruiters with a huge senior year.
THIS AND THAT
▪ Barry University’s men’s basketball team (12-2) has won nine straight games and it got ranked nationally last week — at No. 14 in NCAA Division II — for the first time this season.
During this hot streak, Barry had its highest-scoring game since 1992 (129 points against Toccoa Falls on Dec. 21).
But the most incredible Barry win happened on Saturday when the Bucs scored nine straight points in the final 65 seconds to beat Rollins, 69-68. The Bucs forced four turnovers in the final minute.
Barry will play host to fifth-ranked Nova Southeastern University (10-2) in a big game on Jan. 22.
▪ NSU 6-6 senior Mark Matthews on Monday was named the Sunshine State Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week after he scoring a career-high 36 points in an overtime road win over 14th-ranked Florida Southern.