Small Conference Game of the Day – February 13

SOUTHERN MISS at UAB, 9:00 PM Eastern, CSS

Assuming that Birmingham melts enough after yesterday’s snowstorm, tonight’s SCGD will be heading there for one of Southern Mississippi’s toughest remaining tests in Conference USA regular season play tonight.  The Golden Eagles enter tonight’s game at 21-3 overall and 8-1 in conference, tied with UTEP for first place.  Our latest bracket projections (check out this week’s Bracket Rundown show which David Griggs will be posting later today) have them at a seed high enough to be in serious at-large consideration should they fail to win the automatic bid.  However, if they want to stay in at-large range they cannot afford any bad losses.  Given their remaining C-USA schedule, pretty much any loss would be arguably a bad one.

On the other side of things, the UAB Blazers at one point this season looked like a serious at-large bid contender.  They had solid wins over Nebraska and North Carolina and a heart-breaking double overtime loss to New Mexico.  Then the calendar flipped to 2014 and the bottom fell out.  Since January 1, UAB has suffered losses to Florida Atlantic, Florida International, North Texas and East Carolina, among others.  Bad loss upon bad loss has destroyed any NCAA tournament chances other than a championship in the C-USA tournament.  The Blazers sit at 14-9 overall but are only 3-6 in conference, all the way down in 11th place.  Finishing below 9th in the conference regular season standings would require UAB to win 5 games in 5 days in the C-USA tournament, a daunting feat that they do not want to be facing.  That makes tonight’s game and every game after it even more important as we head towards March.