The Green Wave have a mixed bag statistically across the American Conference as they head into league play.
The Tulane Green Wave are in their bye week, and it will be their only one of the season as they regroup ahead of American Conference play.
As they do so, let’s see how the stats tell the story ahead of their conference slate which will ultimately decide their fate this year.
The Green Wave rank dead last in the American in scoring offense with an average of 18.8 points per game. Their next two opponents, the Army Black Knights and Memphis Tigers, rank third and fourth averaging 34.7 and 33.5 yards per game respectively.
Now, Tulane had a tough out of conference slate with two Power Four matchups on the road and two solid G6 teams with no FCS opponent slated in. That’ll certainly distort thing.
Army has faced one FCS team and two American opponents (USF, Temple), while the Tigers played one FCS team and three G6 opponents.
And to that point, the Black Knights put up 59 points on Bryant while Memphis put up 45 on UT Martin.
On scoring defense, meaning how much each defense has allowed on the year, the Green Wave fare a bit better at fourth in the American with an average of 23.3 points per game allowed.
Interestingly, the defense is 11th in total defense allowing 422 yards per game. But that goes to show that the Green Wave have fared pretty well in the red zone.
Tulane slots in surprisingly slow on rushing offense at 11th with an average of 160.5 yards per game, showing how distorted things were in both P4 matchups as running backs Jaylin Lucas and Maurice Turner ran for over 200 yards a pop in both G6 wins.
The defense has also been tested by Nate Sheppard and Avery Johnson and that places them at 12th in the American allowing an average of 191 yards per game.
Both the offense and defense are seventh in passing, with the offense averaging 186.3 yards per game to the defense’s 231 yards.
Now onto passing protection, which has been a mix of poor pass blocking by the offensive line and a bit of too much holding onto the ball by Kadin Semonza in particular against Southern Miss. He incurred three sacks on the night.
But they are dead last in American play with 13 sacks allowed on the year.
Defensively, they rank 10th with five sacks this season – four of which came against the Golden Eagles.
To round things up, they rank 13th in red zone offense, but have converted 7-of-8 attempts, good for an 87.5 percent conversion rate that fares a bit better at 9th.
The defense slots in at fifth with 12-of-17 attempts allowed for a 70.6 percent conversion rate.
Last, Tulane is 13th in time of possession averaging 25:41 minutes per contest.
So, there’s a lot to like and a lot to clean up in those numbers in this critical off week.
