UCF again leads list of Group of Five standouts

Central Florida again shapes up as the nation’s top Group of Five program heading into the season. Just not by nearly as wide a margin as the last couple of years.

The Knights haven’t lost a regular-season game since 2016 and now must try to continue that roll without star quarterback McKenzie Milton, who suffered a severe knee injury in last year’s regular-season finale.

UCF is trying to bounce back from a Fiesta Bowl loss to LSU that snapped the Knights’ 25-game winning streak.

“We’ve got great belief in who and what we are as a program,” UCF coach Josh Heupel said. “Our players are extremely confident. Since I’ve been here, I think our players have and probably always will have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. I don’t think that’s a bad thing for our program.”

UCF could face a major challenge from Cincinnati in the American Athletic Conference’s East Division. Cincinnati returns the nucleus of a team that went 11-2 and beat Virginia Tech in the Military Bowl last season.

The final Associated Press Top 25 last season had UCF 11th and Cincinnati 24th. The other Group of Five conference to have multiple ranked teams at the end of the season was the Mountain West, with Fresno State (18th), Utah State (22nd) and Boise State (23rd).

Here are six Group of Five programs that bear watching this season. For this list, we decided to include at least one school from each of the G5 conferences (American, Mountain West, Conference USA, MidAmerican and Sun Belt): The Broncos have the preseason MWC defensive player of the year in Curtis Weaver, who collected 9 ½ sacks last season. Boise State has won at least 10 games 11 of the last 13 seasons. opportunities to grab the spotlight. The Bearcats host UCLA and visit Ohio State in the first two weeks of the season. UCF visits Cincinnati on Oct. 4 in a matchup that could determine which team plays in the AAC championship game.