After a brief postponement due to Hurricane Ian, UCF and SMU are set to do battle this Wednesday in the Bounce House. It's the American Athletic Conference opener for both schools and the ties run deep among coaching staffs. SMU is led by first-year head coach Rhett Lashlee, a Gus Malzahn protégé who was a high school quarterback for Malzahn and later coached with him at Auburn.

We caught up with Steve Lansdale, publisher of PonyFans.com for more than 20 years, to talk about the matchup. Lansdale also doubles as the SMU radio network football sideline reporter and does play by play for other SMU sports.

A few notes about SMU:

SMU is 2-2 to start the 2022 season:

at North Texas: W, 48-10

Lamar: W, 45-16

at Maryland: L, 34-27

TCU: L, 42-34

The SMU-TCU game is a longtime rivalry - the "Battle for the Iron Skillet" - and this past matchup also marked the return of Sonny Dykes, who left SMU for TCU this past offseason.

Lansdale spoke a bit about the heated atmosphere for that game.

Rhett Lashlee is SMU's new coach. We've covered his extensive history with Gus Malzahn. He played high school quarterback for Malzahn at Shiloh Christian High School in Arkansas and later coached with him at Auburn (and other stops).

Lashlee left Malzahn in 2017 to coach at UConn, then was the OC at SMU under Sonny Dykes in 2018-19 and had been at Miami the past two seasons. Given his ties to SMU and Dykes, he made a lot of sense for SMU for head coach.

SMU is No. 9 in total offense, averaging 506 yards per game. No. 6 in passing offense. On the other side of the ball, SMU is No. 91 in total defense (400 yards per game).

Meanwhile, UCF is No. 16 in total offense (482.5 ypg) and No. 16 in total defense (313 ypg). UCF is also No. 1 in red zone defense.

Lansdale talks about players to watch from SMU, notably QB Tanner Mordecai (third nationally in passing) and WR Rashee Rice who leads the nation in receiving.

At the end, we also talked about conference realignment and chatter SMU could be a PAC-12 target.