Bonesville Weekender

Scramble is on for invitations to Kinston

Bonesville.net Staff

Four down and four to go — Conference USA Baseball Tournament berths, that is.

With regular season action entering its next-to-last weekend, the eight teams still on the outside looking in face varying degrees of optimism or anxiety — depending upon their places in the standings.

The pressure is minimal for league co-leaders Houston and Southern Mississippi (both 16-7) and Louisville and Texas Christian (both 16-8), all of which have nailed down tourney spots and are focused not on survival, but on jockeying for the regular season title and favorable seedings.

A few other clubs control their own fates and can punch their tickets to the double-elimination playoffs in Kinston's Grainger Stadium without assistance from third parties.

East Carolina (14-9) can clinch a berth with its next conference win. South Florida (13-11) and Tulane (12-12) can also gain slots by picking up another league win or two.

Those teams further down the pecking order have more complicated pathways to the postseason, ranging in difficulty from cluttered to virtually hopeless.

Cincinnati (9-14-1) and Charlotte (9-15) have fighting chances to earn invitations to the tourney, while Memphis (7-14), Saint Louis (7-15) and UAB (6-18) are hanging on for dear life to miniscule or microscopic possibilities.

All 12 C-USA teams are brawling within the family this weekend in the typical Friday-Saturday-Sunday sets.

Perhaps the most compelling matchup is one which opens a new front in a half-century-old war. East Carolina and USM, which have been knocking heads on the gridiron since 1951, will wage battle on the diamond for the first time. As is usually the case when the schools meet in a sporting event, each will have special motivation for prevailing over the other.

ECU will be on a mission to wrap up a bid to the tournament and protect or improve its status in the polls (24th in Baseball America, 22nd in USA Today/ESPN). Conversely, the Golden Eagles can make a headlong rush for C-USA's regular season title by knocking the Pirates for a loop.

In other three-game pairings, Houston visits Charlotte, Louisville hosts UAB, TCU entertains Cincinnati, Memphis is on the road at Saint Louis and South Florida is at home against Tulane.

Next week, there are a handful of non-conference games, including ECU's Wednesday trip to UNC-Wilmington. Then, the regular season comes to a climax with six more conference series scheduled on a revised format — Thursday-Friday-Saturday — to provide an extra one-day cushion before opening day of the May 22-26 tournament.

The Pirates, hoping to have already locked down a spot in K-Town before then, will host Louisville.

Following is the schedule for all C-USA teams leading up to the tournament:

02/23/2007 11:21 AM

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