TAMPA – Pete Lembo has a certain level of familiarity with South Florida coach Skip Holtz. Both coached in North Carolina for five years before moving on to their current jobs within 12 months of each other.
Though Lembo and Holtz did not meet on the field when they were at Elon and East Carolina, respectively, simply coaching in the same area of the country meant their paths crossed often. Lembo even hired one of Holtz's former graduate assistants as an assistant coach.
"Just the geographic location, I was able to follow their program," Lembo said. "I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how coach Holtz runs his program and I feel there are a lot of similarities."
Lembo would like there to be even more similarities between the programs in the future. On the surface, South Florida (1-0) and Ball State seem to be miles apart. The Bulls enter the game ranked No. 22 in the country after upsetting Notre Dame and will likely contend for the Big East championship and the conference's automatic BSC bowl bid. The Cardinals, meanwhile, are not expected to even be serious contenders to be bowl eligible this year.
But looking deeper, Lembo said in a few years he would like to have the kind of experienced players South Florida has on its roster now.
"They are, in the Big East right now, what we would like to become in the [Mid-American Conference]," Lembo said. "That is a team that is both talented, but also very, very experienced. When you look at their offense, defense and special teams, what jumps out to me is the large number of redshirt seniors and redshirt juniors that are playing for them."
The Bulls have 33 players who have played at least four seasons of college football. The Cardinals, meanwhile, have only 25 such players.
South Florida's experience is one of the reasons Ball State is expecting a much tougher opponent than it faced on Opening Night, when it upset Indiana 27-20 at Lucas Oil Stadium. The Bulls are expected to be much more physically talented than the Hoosiers, which will create problems for an offensive line that dominated the second half against Indiana.
"They're probably the fastest team we'll play all season," guard Jordan Hansel said. "They're really big, but we can play them with the technique we have."
Ball State was able to enjoy its upset against Indiana last week, but knows it will have to play better if it hopes to beat a ranked team for the first time since 2001 when it defeated Toledo 24-20 on Oct. 20.
Lembo was concerned about a possible hangover in the immediate aftermath of the Indiana game, but after watching film of South Florida's opening victory at Notre Dame, he was dealt a sharp dose of reality, which he then passed on to his team.
"I made it very clear that we had to move on quickly," Lembo said. "As soon as you turned on the video from South Florida's game against Notre Dame it made it very easy to move on because this is a very good football team and they present a huge challenge for us."
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