Conference USA Tournament - First Round Recap

(10) East Carolina 68 (7) Rice 66

The Rice Owls led the East Carolina Pirates by a 62-56 score with 6:49 left in Wednesday's initial first-round game at the Conference USA Tournament in Memphis, Tennessee. The Owls had been playing well of late and had a great opportunity to prolong their season, earning a shot at the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles in the quarterfinals.

Then they stopped scoring. The Owls hit only one field goal in the final 6:49, as East Carolina dug in its heels on defense and rallied for a two-point win at FedEx Forum. The Pirates now get a chance to play Southern Mississippi, while Rice's season is likely over. Miguel Paul made two pressure-packed foul shots for ECU to give the Pirates a four-point lead with 30 seconds left. Rice then scored its only basket of the stretch run at the 19-second mark. Miguel then missed the front end of a one-and-one with 14 ticks left on the clock, giving Rice one last chance. However, the Owls' Lucas Kuipers missed a jumper with four seconds to go. East Carolina snagged the rebound and ran out the clock.

(6) Marshall 74 (11) SMU 56

The Marshall Thundering Herd showed some promise in the earlier stages of the Conference USA regular season but lost ground as the weeks passed by. The Herd now have a chance to grab an automatic bid if it can put together four straight days of top-level basketball. After one day, the boys from Huntington, West Virginia, are still alive in their quest to cut down some nets in Memphis on Saturday afternoon.

Marshall waxed the Southern Methodist Mustangs, very possibly ending the tenure of SMU coach Matt Doherty, the member of Dean Smith's first national championship team in 1982 at North Carolina who then failed as the Tar Heels' coach before Roy Williams rode into Chapel Hill to rescue the program. Doherty, humiliated by his failure at his alma mater, tried to resurrect his coaching career in suburban Dallas with the Mustangs, but he was simply never able to turn the corner. The Ponies will likely search for a new coach in the coming months, though nothing about Doherty's status has yet been made official.

(8) UTEP 67 (9) Houston 62 (OT)

The University of Texas El Paso Miners were staring at the end of their season in the latter stages of their first-round game against the Houston Cougars, so they responded with the urgency of a team that was being held at knifepoint. The Miners wiggled free of their predicament, scoring seven points in the final two minutes of regulation to force overtime and then end Houston's season in Memphis. UTEP was down 55-51 with two minutes left, but an old-fashioned three-point play gave the Miners the push they needed to catch the Cougars, who have been an almost-but-not-quite team throughout 2012. UTEP buckled down on defense in the overtime period, allowing two baskets, one of them being a garbage bucket with seven seconds left when the outcome had been decided. UTEP now advances to play Memphis. This might seem like a mismatch, given that UTEP is the eight seed and Memphis is the top seed, but UTEP won at Memphis a few weeks ago. We'll see if that result has any kind of carryover effect on Thursday night.

(5) UAB 72 (12) Tulane 64

The Alabama-Birmingham Blazers have entered past Conference USA Tournament situations with at-large NCAA Tournament hopes on their minds, but this year, UAB must go all the way and win the event in order to make the Big Dance. UAB didn't have to be spectacular in round one - it will need to be at its best in future rounds - but it was good enough to dispose of the Tulane Green Wave and move on to face Central Florida in the quarterfinals. Cameron Moore scored 22 points and Ovie Soko threw down 20 for the Blazers, who hit just over 52 percent of their field goal attempts and made 26 foul shots against a Tulane defense that was generally slow to react throughout the night at FedEx Forum. UAB's defense limited Tulane to a paltry 2-of-16 shooting effort from three-point range.