Central Florida @ Tulsa preview

Last Meeting ( Nov 14, 2014 ) Tulsa 7, Central Florida 31

Tulsa has a great chance to take a step forward in its bid for a return to a bowl game when it hosts winless UCF on Saturday. Four rushing touchdowns - three by Zack Langer - helped the Golden Hurricane get past SMU 40-31 last week, evening Tulsa's record and leaving it two victories shy of bowl eligibility.

It reached a postseason game in eight of 10 years before two straight down seasons left the squad on the outside looking in. "We’ve got number four; we got four games left and obviously we want all four of those to be W’s, but we want to make sure we get two of those four and get ourselves bowl eligible," coach Philip Montgomery said in his weekly press conference Tuesday. The misery continued for the Golden Knights in a 52-7 setback at Cincinnati last Saturday, the program's 10th straight loss dating to last season's Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Tulsa enters the weekend ranked ninth among 127 FBS teams in total offense (532 yards) while Central Florida is last (263.8).

TV: Noon ET, ESPNews. LINE: Tulsa -16.5

ABOUT CENTRAL FLORIDA (0-9, 0-5 American Athletic): Some members of the Golden Knights are using their last trip to Tulsa in 2012 - which saw Tulsa use a controversial punt return for a touchdown en route to a 33-27 overtime win in the Conference USA title game - as motivation. "I'm still bitter about that to this day and I probably will until the day that I die," senior running back Cedric Thompson told reporters Monday. "But, yeah, we have a little bit of a bad taste about that play and we want to get rid of that." The Golden Knights will try to lean on a running game that piled up a season-high 212 yards on the ground last week.

ABOUT TULSA (4-4, 1-3): Dane Evans had a season-low 240 passing yards against SMU but did not turn the ball over and was on-target with a season-high 70.4 percent completion rate. He was bolstered by the returns of Langer, who had missed the previous game, and D'Angelo Brewer, who was out the previous two games but came back to record a game-high 119 rushing yards and a score. Langer has 14 rushing touchdowns, tied for the third-most in a single season at Tulsa.

EXTRA POINTS

1. Golden Knights QB Justin Holman, who has thrown nine interceptions in four games since returning from a broken finger, tossed a career-high three touchdowns in a 31-7 win in last season's meeting.

2. Evans (42 passing touchdowns) remains tied for fifth on the school's all-time list.

3. UCF is 11th in the AAC in total defense (503 yards) in league play while Tulsa ranks 12th (532.5).

PREDICTION: Tulsa 45, UCF 21