UNIVERSITY PARK — SMU may enter Saturday’s ACC Championship contest as a 2.5-point favorite over Clemson, but in many ways the Mustangs are underdogs.

They enter a Blue Blood program with more wins in ACC Championship games than any other team in the conference.

And they’re facing this team that’s just two hours from his home in Death Valley.

Against a Clemson team with one of the most devout fan bases in college sports, SMU is preparing for another road-like environment in Charlotte. But this time of year, that’s no stranger to Rhett Lashlee’s routine.

“Obviously Clemson has a great fan base. They travel well,” the SMU head coach said Tuesday. “We’re used to it.”

Saturday’s ACC title game will be SMU’s third straight postseason matchup that will feel like a road game. It was playing on the road at Tulane when it won the American Athletic Conference title last year with a 26-14 win this week. It also played in the bowl game at Fenway Park against Boston College.

Lashlee said he expects the crowd at Bank of America Stadium to be less inconsistent than at those two contests.

“Given the crowds we’ve had here in Dallas this year, I have no doubt that our fans will travel very well,” he said. “You’ll be on fire.”

But even though it resembles a street environment, the mustangs thrive there. They have won 10 straight road games – the longest active streak in the FBS – including some of their most important wins of the season in close matchups with Louisville and Duke.

“When we go on tour, we don’t make it a bigger deal than it is,” Lashlee said. “Maybe that’s why our boys were so successful. If you are a competitor, you want there to be energy in the building. You want there to be an atmosphere in the stadium. I think there will definitely be this Saturday night.”

Even more than their other five road games at Ford Stadium, Saturday’s game brings additional motivation for the Mustangs.

They may be the favorite, but as expected, their path to the conference title runs through the team that has been the pride of the ACC for decades.

SMU may be viewed as an underdog in some ways, but it started its inaugural ACC season that way – and has performed well at the position all season long.

“It’s kind of the end of our freshman season,” Lashlee said. “We started with Florida State, which won the league last year and went undefeated, and we end with Clemson, which is seeking its ninth conference championship, and here we are just emerging in our first. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to challenge ourselves. We wanted to see where we stood. We wanted to be at that level. We wanted to play on this stage.”

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