Conference USA
March 8-12. All games at Birmingham.
kPOY: Alex Hamilton, Louisiana Tech.
Conference USA gets underway Tuesday afternoon with a first-round game at Bartow Arena.
UAB rolled through Conference USA with a 16-2 record, finishing the season 26-5 overall. However, the Blazers didn’t play a single game against Tier A competition and they are the lowest-rated of the seven five-loss teams in the country as of this writing. Nonetheless, that’s good enough to be the best team in this conference, and being able to play the conference in its backyard makes UAB the clear favorite in this event.
C-USA has a decent group of teams that could cause problems for Jerod Haase’s club. This writer wouldn’t mind seeing Marshall pull off the upset, mainly because head coach Dan D’Antoni could stick it to all the people who criticized his hiring two seasons ago. At 16-15, the Thundering Herd aren’t catching anyone’s eye right now, but they were 12-6 in conference play and had the best per-possession offense in Conference USA.
Rd1 Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 UAB 100 100 78.7 53.4 37.8 2 Middle Tennessee 100 100 67.3 38.4 16.0 3 Marshall 100 100 68.5 37.0 15.1 4 Louisiana Tech 100 100 52.3 19.7 10.5 5 Old Dominion 100 86.3 45.6 18.4 10.3 8 Western Kentucky 100 75.0 18.8 7.8 3.6 7 Charlotte 100 66.9 25.1 11.2 3.5 11 FIU 100 50.6 16.1 5.7 1.4 6 UTEP 100 49.4 15.4 5.5 1.3 10 Rice 100 33.1 7.6 2.2 0.4 9 North Texas 100 25.0 2.5 0.5 0.1 12 Florida Atlantic 61.0 9.5 1.6 0.2 0.04 13 UTSA 39.0 4.2 0.5 0.04 0.006
Conference USA tourney records (since 1999)
Middle Tennessee 4- 2 Charlotte 12- 7 Louisiana Tech 3- 2 UTEP 11-10 Southern Miss 14-14 FIU 1- 1 Western Kentucky 1- 1 UAB 15-16 Marshall 6-10 North Texas 1- 2 Old Dominion 1- 2 Rice 5-10 Florida Atlantic 0- 1 UTSA 0- 2