Marshall vs UAB Basketball Recap

Marshall 81, UAB 74

What's good for the Marshall Thundering Herd isn't necessarily good for the administrators and executives of Conference USA. The post-John Calipari era in this contentious Southern basketball league is producing a very spirited environment, but a climate of cutthroat competition is proving to be so pervasive that the top teams in the league aren't able to separate themselves from the pack.

A prime example of this dynamic emerged Saturday night in Birmingham, Ala.

For the past month, the UAB Blazers have been the leading at-large candidate for an NCAA Tournament berth. Coach Mike Davis led his team to a dynamic December, with wins over Cincinnati, South Alabama, and a crown-jewel kind of conquest against big, bad Butler that will continue to look great on an NCAA resume. UAB also won at Arkansas on Jan. 2, defeating a team which shares the lead in the SEC West. Other teams in C-USA haven't done the kind of work the Blazers did in non-conference contests; that's why the boys from Birmingham owned the best at-large credentials in a conference where Memphis whiffed against Gonzaga and Kansas, Tulsa bowed to Missouri State (despite its win over Oklahoma State), and UTEP lost its big chance against Mississippi.

But now, UAB's non-conference excellence is being called into question. The Blazers are getting eaten up in their own backyard - it's a classic case of in-conference cannibalism. The vicious fight for league supremacy is eroding the portfolio crafted by UAB, and that's endangering C-USA's chances of sending more than one team to the NCAA Tournament.

The men from Marshall put a big dent in the Blazers' postseason aspirations Saturday night at Bartow Arena. Coach Donnie Jones led a lineup that bolted to a 46-32 second-half lead and then withstood two UAB rallies to dig out its biggest triumph of the season. UAB responded to that 14-point deficit by pulling within one possession of the lead on two separate occasions, the second time on a 6-0 spurt that shaved the Blazers' deficit to 64-62 just before the final (under-four-minute) media timeout of the second half.

However, the Herd from Huntington, W. Va., had the final answer in this electrically-charged encounter. A 10-2 run pushed the lead back to a comfortable working margin at 74-64, and by hitting 9 of 11 foul shots in the final minute of play, Marshall - a tough, two-point loser at Tulsa earlier this season - finally beat one of C-USA's big boys on the road. The win does wonders for Marshall's NIT candidacy, but that's not what C-USA honchos wanted to hear. The result seriously endangers the Blazers' NCAA chances, meaning that in a year without an ascendant assemblage of athletes from Memphis, this league could wind up - once again - with only one ticketholder in a Dance hall that can accept only 65 reservations.

Tyler Wilkerson - the outstanding Marshall forward who soared for 28 points and 10 rebounds in this game - might indeed be a hero to his teammates and his fan base right now, but the highly-skilled senior from Lexington, Ky., could have cut into Conference USA's revenue pie after placing Alabama-Birmingham in a perilous postseason position. Such is life when a conference is so deliciously intriguing that cannibalism - the eating of everyone - gets in the way of top-tier tournament success.