On the Navy radio pregame show, Pete Medhurst, Omar Nelson, and Joe Miller talked about how this year’s Navy-Memphis game was a bit of a role reversal. Last year, Navy came to Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium looking to prove itself against a ranked Memphis team. This year, it’s the Tigers who traveled to Annapolis seeking validation against the #24 Midshipmen. More than that, the winner of this game would be in the driver’s seat in the American Athletic Conference’s West division. The Mids got Memphis’ best shot and still came away with a 42-28 win. That’s impressive.

As impressive as it was, the game was a little bit closer than it might appear. There are certainly some superlatives that stand out on the stat sheet; Navy had 101 more total yards and dominated time of possession. However, they also had a few bounces go their way, too. The Mids’ first possession almost didn’t happen after it appeared that Memphis might have recovered the kickoff, but replay showed that the kick went out of bounds. An early Chris High fumble was recovered by an alert Tyler Carmona. There was another near-fumble on a kick return, but after review, replay officials determined that the runner’s knee was down just before he lost possession. Had any of these gone the other way, the game would’ve looked a lot different.

As it was, Navy’s good fortune was the primary driver behind the most important statistic from the game: points off turnovers. Memphis entered the game leading the nation in takeaways, averaging three per game. Converting those turnovers into points is how Memphis pulls ahead of teams and forces them to play from behind, but they couldn’t score after Navy’s one fumble.