No. 2 Cincinnati is the last thing struggling Tulane needs

NEW ORLEANS – Tulane doesn’t really need to be facing the No. 2 football team in the country right now.

But ready or not, No. 2 Cincinnati will be in Yulman Stadium to face the battered and reeling Green Wave at 11 a.m. Saturday.

The Bearcats (7-0 and 3-0 in the American Athletic Conference) are headed to the College Football Playoff as long as they keep winning.

They are the highest-ranked team to play at Yulman since it opened in 2014. They are the highest-ranked team to play the Green Wave on their home field since No. 2 LSU won 34-9 on Sept. 29, 2007 and they are the highest-ranked team to play on the Tulane campus since No. 1 Alabama won 44-6 in Tulane Stadium on Sept. 28, 1962.

“We knew we had a tough schedule coming into the season,” Green Wave offensive lineman Sincere Haynesworth said after practice Tuesday morning.

In fact, preseason No. 3 Oklahoma would have been the highest-ranked opponent on the Tulane campus since ’62 if the season opener had gone on as scheduled. But Hurricane Ida forced that game to be moved to Norman, Okla., where the Wave had their most impressive performance of the season before falling to 40-35 to the current No. 4 team in the country.

Since then Tulane (1-6 and 0-3) has lost to two other ranked teams – Ole Miss and SMU – and has dropped five consecutive games. The Green Wave’s next loss will guarantee a losing record.

“It’s never fun losing,” Haynesworth said. “We’ve been through a lot of adversity.”

The latest bit of adversity is the concussion suffered by quarterback Michael Pratt in the 55-26 loss at SMU on Oct. 21. Pratt, who has been beat up all season, is in concussion protocol and could miss the game Saturday.

His primary backup, Justin Ibieta, has been sidelined for a month because of a turn labrum. That means freshman Kai Horton from Carthage, Texas, could be the starting quarterback against a national-championship contender.

“Everybody has to play better, it’s not just about who plays quarterback,” head coach Willie Fritz said. “We’ve all got to play better and we’ve got to play better for four quarters.”

And they certainly have to play better on defense. Only two teams in the country are allowing more than the 42.3 points per game that the Wave are surrendering.

Fritz said he and his staff are taking measures to cut down on the mental mistakes on defense. He pushed his staff to get the game plan ready earlier in the week so the players would have more time to practice it.

“We’re trying to simplify it a little bit,” he said. “You can’t be so simple that (the opponent) knows what you’re doing on every play. With the way offenses are nowadays that would be a recipe for disaster. But we have to make sure everyone knows their assignment and can carry it out.”

Fritz said he and his staff are looking for anything that can help them turn the season around, but they don’t want to have “paralysis by over-analysis.”

“We’re getting after it,” he said. “That’s what you have to do every day. We’re going to keep grinding and stay as positive as we possibly can.”

Tulane might find hope in the fact that 48 ranked teams have lost a game to an unranked team this season. But this would be one of the biggest upsets.

As if the losing streak, Pratt’s injury and the quality of the opponent weren’t enough for the Wave to deal with this week, there’s another factor that isn’t helpful.

Cincinnati is coming off its most competitive game of the season, a 27-20 victory over four-touchdown underdog Navy that wasn’t secured until the Bearcats made an interception near midfield in the final 25 seconds.

So the Bearcats, whose previous closest games were a 24-13 win at Notre Dame and a 38-24 win at Indiana, isn’t likely to overlook the Wave.

“We can’t look past any opponent because we know every opponent is going to give us their best,” quarterback Desmond Ridder said Tuesday. “We have to be focused and locked in every week and keep improving.”

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