NCAAF Heat Check
College Football Heat Check, Montana State 5-0 in Their Last 5
Published
Ten games is not a season, but it is a mood, and moods decide a lot of games. The current mood around College Football: Montana State keep winning, Utah Tech keep losing, and everybody else lives somewhere in the weather between.
Who's hot
Start with Montana State. They have won 5 of their last 5, and they have not been sneaking past anyone: the points margin over that stretch is +113, which breaks down to about 37.6 scored and 15.0 allowed per game. That is the arithmetic of a team winning on merit, not on bounces.
Lehigh are the closest thing to company at 5-0, with a +97 points margin that says the record is no fluke.
South Dakota State (4-1) round out the warm end of the ledger.
Some context helps: across every club in the sample, scoring sits at 24.3 points per game right now. Montana State are beating the league's own pace by 13.3 a game.
The cold end
At the bottom of the temperature map sit Utah Tech: 0-5 in their last 5, -167 on points margin. That is about 33.4 a game in the wrong direction, and no lineup shuffle fixes it overnight.
VMI are not far behind on the misery index at 0-5.
Do not ignore the middle class, either: Southeast Missouri State (2-3) and Wofford (2-3) sit close enough that a single hot or cold series flips their order.
At a glance
Here is the warm half of the form table, last ten games for every club:
| Team | Last 10 | Points +/- |
|---|---|---|
| Montana State | 5-0 (5 gm) | +113 |
| Lehigh | 5-0 (5 gm) | +97 |
| South Dakota State | 4-1 (5 gm) | +132 |
| Austin Peay | 4-1 (5 gm) | +100 |
| Montana | 4-1 (5 gm) | +68 |
One more thing
As always, watch where record and points margin tell different stories about the same club. The margin tends to know first.