Could Central Florida surprise USF on Saturday, just a year after losing to the Bulls by 52 points? USF coach Jim Leavitt knows a thing or two about how much a badly beaten team can improve in a year's time.

As an assistant coach at Kansas State in the early 1990s, Leavitt witnessed two such turnarounds against ranked teams, and while neither resulted in upsets, they represent the exact kind of scare the Bulls hope to avoid Saturday at Bright House Networks Stadium.

In 1990, Leavitt's first year on Bill Snyder's staff at K-State, the Wildcats were humbled with a 64-3 loss at Colorado. The next year, with the game at home in Manhattan, the Wildcats gave No. 16 Colorado a real battle, losing 10-0.

The next year, in 1992, Kansas State was destroyed again by Colorado in Boulder, 54-7. Back in Manhattan in '93, an unranked K-State team played the No. 16 Buffaloes to a 16-16 tie (remember those?) and would spend the rest of that season in the top 25.

Asked whether UCF might be motivated by last year's lopsided score, Leavitt said he didn't think that would be the case.

"Every year's different. It really is," he said. "Every year's a new year. I don't live in the past. You live in the now. That's all there is to it, and we focus in on what's going on today."

Asked if he remembered such turnarounds at Kansas State, Leavitt played the focused-on-now-and-nothing-else card ...

"Lord, I don't know," Leavitt said. "That's so long ago, I can't remember that far. Last night I remember we had a practice. I'm being honest. We could have done better. It was a good practice, wasn't great."

-- My favorite Leavitt quote from Tuesday's news conference? He was asked about what stood out from the previous three meetings with UCF: "Good football. A lot of emotion, a lot of kids from Florida playing, like any time you're going to play another team in Florida. We've played a bunch of Florida teams. There's a lot of emotion, because in the state of Florida, everybody's in one state. Whether it's an hour's drive north, two hours' north, 15 minutes, it's going to be the same. There's always emotion and people are going to play hard."