Conference USA conference tournament preview

This is part 20 of a 33-part series in this blog, designed to give you all the information you need to know about each conference's tournament, and the postseason prospects of every single team in the conference.

Final standings:
Louisiana Tech 15-3
UTEP 13-5
Old Dominion 13-5
UAB 12-6
Western Kentucky 12-6
Middle Tennessee 9-9
Texas-San Antonio 8-10
North Texas 8-10
Rice 8-10
Florida International 8-10
Charlotte 7-11
Marshall 7-11
Southern Miss 4-14
Florida Atlantic 2-16

Conference tournament format:  Wednesday March 11 to Saturday March 14.  Southern Miss is under a postseason ban; I couldn't find anything on Florida Atlantic on first glance, but they're either not invited to this tourney or they're ineligible.  And it really doesn't matter, does it?

The matchups:
1) Louisiana Tech vs. 8/9) North Texas/Rice
4) UAB vs. 5/12) Western Kentucky/Marshall
2) UTEP vs. 7/10) Texas-San Antonio/Florida International
3) Old Dominion vs. 6/11) Middle Tennessee/Charlotte

The stakes:
Old Dominion has been lurking since they blew a few games, but as the rest of the bubble falls away due to attrition, ODU might be one of the last ones standing.  Wins over VCU, LSU, and Richmond (gaining steam!) are nice.  However, they lost a lot of road games in conference play (5 in all).  And these 5 were their 5 toughest road games in the conference, which doesn't bode well.  Since they only played 1 road game in the non-con (and 3 neutral site games, to be fair), this road thing is perhaps a fatal flaw.  Avenging a loss to UTEP in this tournament is probably mandatory, and then we'll see.

LaTech has a NIT bid, naturally.  UTEP is an interesting NIT bubble team.  They did enough in the non-con (4 losses, all of which were reasonable, beat Xavier).  Two bad, bad road losses in CUSA might doom them, though.  In the end, a NIT bubble team that I won't feel too strongly about in either direction.  Western Kentucky is probably too far gone from NIT contention, though.

Down in the CBI/CIT territory, WKU and UAB seem like a cinch (WKU more than UAB).  Middle Tennessee is eliglble and probable for a bid; FIU and UTSA are 2 wins away from a .500 record.