Before last year's ACC championship game, the SMU and Clemson football teams had never played each other. Now they are meeting for the second time in 10 months.

And while there won't be a trophy given out at the end of this game, that doesn't take anything away from it. Both College Football Playoff teams from a year ago are fighting for their postseason lives.

"We're probably, both, going into this game flying under the radar," SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee said. "A game that probably had a lot of preseason matchup hype, it's the same game. It's the same big game with big implications for both teams. … It's the same game we thought it was going to be. It should be a really good football game if we're able to do the things that we need to do to compete and give them a game."

The Mustangs come into the game following home wins against Syracuse and Stanford, improving their nation-best regular season conference winning streak to 19 games. Now they have to do it on the road with their toughest task away from Ford Stadium starting things off.

"We've got to go on the road three of the next four weeks and start it off with going to Clemson, which is one of the hardest places to play in America," Lashlee said. "Great challenge. Our guys are excited about the opportunity. It's a rematch — a lot of different faces on our side, for sure — but a rematch of last year's (ACC) championship game that ended up being a really good game. Hopefully we can go in there and give them a good game this year."

Clemson had a tough start to the season, with a loss to LSU and then conference setbacks to Georgia Tech and Syracuse. But they have gotten back into the win column against UNC and Boston College the last two weeks.

The Tigers are looking more like the team that was picked to repeat as ACC champions and ranked fourth in the country at the beginning of the year.

"Look, all the preseason accolades were right," Lashlee said. "They struggled a little bit early. The last two weeks I think they're hitting their stride. … They did like we did. They went through the bye week and kind of figured out what they needed to do for this year, and they've played really well the last two weeks out of the bye week. They're getting right at the right time for us to be coming to town."

A big part of SMU getting back to its usual self was getting healthy on offense. That included the return of receiver Jordan Hudson.

Hudson was injured on the first play of the season. In his three games back, he's caught 14 passes for 196 yards and a pair of touchdowns. 

And the Mustangs are still getting better.

"I feel like we're getting back into it. We're not fully ourselves yet," Hudson said. "We're still missing little tick-tack stuff, but I feel like we're definitely in that process and definitely getting there. This week will be a great test to see where we're at."

With Clemson's low transfer portal numbers and having a young team a year ago, the team is very similar to the one SMU faced in Charlotte. One of the biggest differences is at defensive coordinator, where the Tigers made a change to Tom Allen at defensive coordinator. But Allen comes from Penn State, which the Mustangs faced in the College Football Playoff.

SMU is hoping to use those similarities and familiar faces to its advantage on Saturday.

"They have the Penn State defensive coordinator now, so it's kind of the same stuff we saw last year," SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings said. "... They've got a lot of returning pieces, a lot of returning starters, and all that. So just getting their personnel down, make sure I go over all their players that are returning from last year, and see what they did last year against us. Trying to get ahead of that."

Meanwhile, the Mustangs are a very different-looking team with over 40 new players on the roster. But those new players are still rallying around the program and last year's loss.

"Clemson's a good team," defensive lineman Jeffrey M'ba said. "They're unpredictable. They have a lot of things going on, a lot of gadget play. It's also revenge for last year. I wasn't here last year, but it is big revenge for us. It's a revenge tour for us. We want to get it all, and we're going to start with them and go through the rest of the season."

Even though Clemson isn't ranked and its record isn't what it usually is, that doesn't mean the Mustangs are taking this game lightly. SMU knows what the Tigers are capable of and what they have historically done.

It's a program that has won at least 10 games in 13 of the last 14 years, winning nine in the other, with a head coach in Dabo Swinney that has one of the best resumes in college football.

That's the kind of success Lashlee and SMU are trying to achieve.

"His teams are always prepared," Lashlee said. "They're used to winning. They expect to win. I think in the last 10 years, they've only lost seven home games. They've just created that winning, championship culture and expectation. He's the patriarch of coaches in our league. They have set the standard in the ACC for the last decade of what it should look like. In order to get our program to that level where year in and year out that's the expectation, that's the reality, you have to be able to play teams like that and find a way to beat them."