Brashard Smith and ninth-ranked SMU never felt they were finished, even when already locked into the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game in their league debut. “It was really important, just being undefeated in the conference,

It is a 15-mile drive from the SMU campus to the Big 12 offices in Las Colinas, but the two might as well be on separate planets. It was to the Mustangs’ never-ending misery that the old amalgam of the SWC and Big Eight never wanted any part of the Dallas private school.