Almost no one in college football punches its weight as well as Western Kentucky

Western Kentucky headed into Tuesday’s Boca Raton Bowl ranked 14th in S&P+ for the season; the Hilltoppers were 11th in 2015. As Jeff Brohm’s tenure came to a close, they’d mastered the art of punching their weight. They were 1-4 against power conference opponents and 20-1 against Group-of-Five opposition.

Make that 21-1. Brohm took the Purdue head coaching job in December, but in their first post-Brohm contest, the Toppers looked the same. They overwhelmed Memphis, 51-31, gaining 598 yards (7.7 per play) via Anthony Wales’ legs, Mike White’s arm, and a little bit of trickeration. And while the Tigers got in some shots, WKU’s 10 tackles for loss, eight passes defensed, and a forced fumble created too many potholes to overcome.

In the early going, this was about missed opportunities. The teams traded three-and-outs, but while WKU scored touchdowns on its next four possessions, Memphis blinked. The Tigers scored two touchdowns in the same span but were forced to settle for two field goals, missing one.

That gave WKU a 28-17 halftime advantage. Two touchdowns in the first eight minutes of the third quarter put the game away.

This was a very WKU game, from the relentless offense to the opportunistic defense. And now the Hilltoppers head into 2017 wondering if “very WKU” will mean the same thing under Mike Sanford as it did under Brohm.

As was the case a year ago, WKU faces some turnover.

Then, it was 5,000-yard passer Brandon Doughty and three of the top five passing targets and half the front seven two-deep.

This year, it’s 1,600-yard rusher Wales, the top two receivers (Taywan Taylor, Nicholas Norris), and star linebacker Keith Brown.

This foursome went out on a high note — Wales rushed 35 times for 243 yards, Taylor and Norris combined for 12 catches for 209 yards, and Brown picked off a pass — but there remains a solid core.

But quarterback White is back, as are receivers Nacarius Fant and Lucky Jackson (combined: 55 catches for 802 yards this year) and eight of WKU’s 11 top tacklers. We’ll see what changes former Notre Dame offensive coordinator Sanford brings, but he has a lot to work with and a lot of expectations.

He also might have a margin for error. Whereas the Hilltoppers entered bowl season in the S&P+ top 20, nobody else in Conference USA was ranked in the top 50. Louisiana Tech, MTSU, Southern Miss, and a quickly rising ODU could be interesting in 2017, but with more than half the conference ranked among FBS’ bottom 25 teams, WKU doesn’t need to fend off many to remain near the top.

It’s been a rough start for the AAC in bowl season. Tulsa romped over CMU, but Houston, UCF, and Memphis have lost by a combined 62 points to San Diego State, Arkansas State, and WKU. Among other things, that illustrates how strange the conference’s bowl pairings have been.

Seven AAC teams qualified for bowls. The lesser of those, per the conference standings, all faced G5 conference champions — No. 7 UCF played Sun Belt co-champ Arkansas State, No. 6 Houston played MWC champ San Diego State, and No. 5 Memphis played WKU, the winner of C-USA.

Meanwhile, No. 4 Tulsa faced MAC No. 7 CMU, No. 3 USF plays SEC No. 10 South Carolina, No. 2 Navy plays CUSA No. 2 Louisiana Tech, and AAC champ Temple plays ACC No. 10 Wake Forest.

This is the opposite of what it should be. Temple-WKU would have been fantastic. SDSU-Navy would have made plenty of sense (though, granted, it would have been the third such bowl meeting since 2010). Louisiana Tech would have given Tulsa a much stiffer test.

The AAC’s bowl matchups are not merit-based, and it has resulted in a lot of mismatches in both directions. And it has both deprived the best Group of 5 conference of a lot of marquee opportunities and created some poor headlines.

Wales, by the way? A mid-three-star recruit. White? Low-three. Taylor and Norris? Mid- to high-two.

White and Brown were transfers (Brown was a former four-star Louisville recruit), but for the most part, Brohm — along with predecessors Willie Taggart and Bobby Petrino — built one of the sturdiest mid-major programs with what was barely top-90 level recruiting.

This is what you want to see if you’re a Purdue fan trying to figure out what to expect from Brohm. You’re not going to start signing top-20 recruiting classes in West Lafayette — Purdue’s five-year recruiting ranking heading into 2016: 67th — but even if Brohm doesn’t improve the Boilermakers’ recruiting that much, he has proved he can find exciting pieces in the three-star (or lower!) ranks.

That doesn’t guarantee success. Plus, if he were to create, say, a top-40 level of play at Purdue, that wouldn’t result in as many wins as it would at WKU.

Of course, Purdue hasn’t been in the S&P+ top 40 since 2005. That would be a nice place to start.