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Bonesville Weekender
Scramble is on for invitations to
Kinston
Bonesville.net Staff
This Weekend's C-USA Pairings |
Houston at
Charlotte
Cincinnati at TCU
ECU at USM |
UAB at
Louisville
Memphis at SLU
Tulane at USF |
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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.
This Week's Polls
and Standings |
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News, Notes and
Schedule Info |
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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:
Friday, May 10
----------------
Houston at Charlotte
Cincinnati at TCU
East Carolina at Southern Miss
UAB at Louisville
Memphis at Saint Louis
Tulane at South Florida
Saturday, May 11
------------------
Houston at Charlotte
Cincinnati at TCU
East Carolina at Southern Miss
UAB at Louisville
Memphis at Saint Louis
Tulane at South Florida
Sunday, May 12
-----------------
Houston at Charlotte
Cincinnati at TCU
East Carolina at Southern Miss
UAB at Louisville
Memphis at Saint Louis
Tulane at South Florida
Monday, May 13
------------------
Louisville at Kentucky
Tuesday, May 14
------------------
N.C. State at Charlotte
Butler at Cincinnati
Houston at Baylor
Murray State at Memphis
Saint Louis at Southern Illinois
South Florida at Stetson
Texas-Arlington at TCU
Mississippi State at UAB
Wednesday, May 15
----------------------
East Carolina at UNC Wilmington
Thursday, May 16
-------------------
Charlotte at Memphis
Saint Louis at Cincinnati
Louisville at East Carolina
TCU at Houston
South Florida at UAB
Southern Miss at Tulane
Friday, May 17
----------------
Charlotte at Memphis
Saint Louis at Cincinnati
Louisville at East Carolina
TCU at Houston
South Florida at UAB
Southern Miss at Tulane
Saturday, May 18
-------------------
Charlotte at Memphis
Saint Louis at Cincinnati
Louisville at East Carolina
TCU at Houston
South Florida at UAB
Southern Miss at Tulane
Tuesday, May 21 - Sunday, May 26
------------------------------------------------
Conference USA Tournament
Grainger Stadium, Kinston, NC
30 Note: Schedule
information from
C-USASports.com.
02/23/2007 11:21 AM |