No word on whether the Tulsa band plans any vengeful shenanigans at halftime, but the Golden Hurricane football team could be racing Rice to 100 points Saturday in Conference USA's marquee matchup.

This matchup at Tulsa's renovated H.A. Chapman Stadium will help sort out the race in the West Division, won last year by the Hurricane. Tulsa (4-0 overall, 1-0 C-USA) has maintained its Arenaball-style offensive attack with new starting quarterback David Johnson, averaging 54.8 points and 600.8 total yards. Johnson leads the nation in pass efficiency rating by a substantial margin.

The Owls (3-2, 2-0), who suffered a dip to 3-9 last year under new coach David Bailiff, have roared back to life under the record-setting pass-catch duo of Chase Clement to Jarrett Dillard. They struck for three touchdowns last week in a 77-20 shelling of North Texas, setting an NCAA career record with 41 such connections.

The undercurrent in this game, regardless of importance, is Tulsa coach Todd Graham. He spent 2006 at Rice and led the Owls to their first bowl game in 45 years and signed a two-year contract extension, only to return to Tulsa when old boss Steve Kragthorpe left for Louisville.

"I say it all the time - when you go to a place and stay one year, you deserve to take some flak," Graham said. "I have no problem with that."

On a rainy, windy late-November day in Houston last year, a sparse crowd got to see some of Rice's bad feeling. The Marching Owl Band, aka "The MOB," skewered Graham in a satirical halftime show called "Todd Graham's Inferno." The theme was a search for Graham through nine circles of hell, based on Dante's "Divine Comedy."

The performance suggested that Graham's shredded Rice contract was found in the fourth circle with the greedy and the avaricious, with the pieces being gathered by just-resigned Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione. Eventually, the "search" went even beyond the ninth circle, behind a door marked "Welcome To Tulsa."

Fans of rogue college marching bands are still celebrating this adaptation of the 14th-century Italian literature, but Tulsa partisans were not amused. A formal complaint to the Conference USA office followed quickly.

The game was just as spirited, with Tulsa escaping with a 48-43 victory. Rice knows it will take more than witty trombone players to slow down the Golden Hurricane this time, too.

"We just have to tackle," said Bailiff. "If we have 20 missed tackles against Tulsa, we are in trouble."

Back in the East Division, the two-game slide by former giant-killer East Carolina has been overshadowed by the plight of Central Florida, which laid a 58-13 egg at Texas-El Paso.

Cornerback Johnell Neal called for a players-only meeting, which was conducted Monday.

"I think it gets to a point where they have to determine what kind of football team they want to be," said UCF coach George O'Leary. "Coaches can talk all the time and it sounds like rhetoric, but it is a player's game. The thing that bothered more than anything was that [UTEP] didn't do anything different than we had practiced."

Quarterback Michael Greco was held out of the UTEP game and is a minute-to-minute decision this week. True freshman Rob Calabrese went 13-of-31 for 167 yards, but O'Leary said he was robbed off three or four big plays by dropped passes.

With a season-ending injury to Rocky Ross, the receiving corps might not get any better. Outside linebacker Cory Hogue is out for at least four weeks with a leg injury.

The Knights (1-3, 0-1) have their best chance to get on track this weekend, playing a porous Southern Methodist defense. Coach June Jones' team is yielding 43.4 points and 519 yards per game.

Briefly

Memphis and UAB were playing in the "Battle of the Bones," a salute to the barbecue heritage of both cities. That tradition was launched in 2006, and Memphis ended a seven-game losing streak in the series last year to seize the 100-pound, bronze-plated rack of ribs.

Reach Doug Smock at 348-5130 or dougsm...@wvgazette.com.