The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
Blazers Enter Conference USA Championship As No. 6 Seed
5/17/2009 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 17, 2009
Championship Central | UAB Gameday Central | Live Audio
2009 C-USA Championship Bracket 
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The UAB baseball team has earned the No. 6 seed in this week's Conference USA Championship and will open the tournament Wednesday at 9 a.m. (CT) against third-seeded Houston at Pete Taylor Park in Hattiesburg, Miss.
The Blazers and Cougars will play the first game of the championship and are in the same side of the bracket with No. 2 seed Rice and seventh-seeded Marshall.
The other half of the bracket features top-seeded East Carolina, which faces a first-round contest against No. 8 seed UCF. The second game in that half matches fourth-seeded Tulane against tournament host and No. 5 seed Southern Miss.
Both sides of the bracket follow a double-elimination format with the winners advancing to a one-game championship, scheduled for Sunday, May 24 at 1 p.m. (CT).
Each game of the tournament will be streamed live on ConferenceUSA.com. The championship game will be televised on a same-day tape delay basis by CBS College Sports at 6:30 p.m. (CT). The tournament champion receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship.
Wednesday's tournament opener will feature an Internet radio broadcast through the baseball schedule page at uabsports.com courtesy of the Blazers ISP Sports Network. Each of UAB's weekday games at the tournament will be carried online, while any weekend contests will be carried by WSPZ-AM 690.
UAB (30-24, 11-12 C-USA) wrapped up the regular season Saturday with a come-from-behind 15-12 victory over Rice to reach the 30-win mark for the first time since 2005. The Blazers also won Thursday's series-opener with Rice on their way to taking two out of three games from the Owls, which entered the week ranked fourth in the country.
Houston (25-29, 13-11 C-USA) is coming off a series in which it dropped two out of three games against UCF in Orlando. After starting the season 4-15 against a difficult schedule filled with ranked opponents, the Cougars posted a major turnaround to win 21 of their final 35 games and finish third in the league standings.
UAB and Houston met for a three-game series back in March to open conference play at Houston's Cougar Field. The Blazers lost the first two games by scores of 5-1 and 6-5 before rebounding to post a 10-2 win in the series finale.
The teams met three times at last season's Conference USA Championship. UAB won a second-round game on a walk-off home run from Ryan Keedy, but Houston came back to defeat the Blazers twice on its way to the tournament title.
