Preview: #6 TCU @ San Diego State 11/07/2009

TCU coach Gary Patterson thought it would be nice to reward his team for all their hard work this season with a nice trip to San Diego to relax and get ready for their match-up with Utah. Oh wait, they're coming for a football game? That's right, the Horned Frogs (8-0) are coming to play the Aztecs (4-4) who are .500 for the first time since 2003. Since joining the MWC, TCU and SDSU have matched up 4 times, and 4 times the Frogs have come out on top. However, the two games at Qualcomm have been much closer that the other two; TCU had to come back from a 17 point deficit in their last game at Qualcomm.

There might be ONE thing going for the Aztecs. Ladanian Tomlinson is in New York getting ready to face the Giants. Why does this matter? Over the past 5 seasons, TCU is undefeated at Qualcomm stadium (including bowl games) and over the past 5 seasons, LT has been on their sideline cheering them on.

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The Aztecs, who are playing .500 ball and riding a two game win streak for the first time in a long time, will face their toughest opponent all season. Since they probably aren't going to win, I'd say the Aztecs have two goals for this game.

1. Score points. TCU has outscored its last three opponents by a 123-13 margin. The Aztecs, even without Vincent Brown, have a pretty high flying air attack; they will try to find a weak link in the TCU defense.

2. Keep the streak going. Of course, they probably won't keep the winning streak going, but I'm talking about other streaks.

Ryan Lindley extended his consecutive games with a TD pass to 14 this past weekend against New Mexico. Lindley's streak is the longest current streak in the MWC and ranks tied for second all-time in league history. If he throws a TD pass on Saturday, he will tie the MWC record with John Beck of BYU. Also, the Aztecs have a really good punter.

The Frogs are undefeated and marching towards the BCS while stomping any team in their path. They have the top-ranked defense in the nation and are also putting up huge numbers on offense. They are trying to take the MWC to a BCS game for the second season in a row. They should be able to put up plenty of points on a suspect SDSU defense. On defense,

SDSU has little or no rushing game and the Frogs should be able to force Lindley to throw the ball and make mistakes. Coach Patterson has said that he is taking this game seriously, but the Frogs have plenty of experience winning at Qualcomm stadium and shouldn't have much of a problem winning a warm-up game before the big match-up with Utah.