The Rice Owls wrapped up the regular season crown with last weekend's series victory against the Houston Cougars. Despite losing their first conference series of the year, the Cougars wrapped up the second seed in the tournament. And by sweeping Southern Miss last weekend, the Tulane Green Wave locked up the #3 seed for next week's trip to Reckling Park. While these three teams know their conference tournament fate, the other six schools in Conference USA will determine their fate over the final week of the season.

There are really two separate mini-tournaments this weekend -- Southern Miss, East Carolina and Memphis are tied for fourth with identical 10-11 records, while Marshall, UCF and UAB are within one game of each other for the final two tournament berths.

Part of the fourth place tie will be settled on the field, as East Carolina travels to Memphis for the regular season finale. The other team involved in the tie -- Southern Miss -- will be hosting UCF this weekend. Unless rain disrupts the weekend schedule, the Pirates and Tigers can't finish in a tie. The Golden Eagles own the tiebreaker against the Pirates but lost the season series to the Tigers. Since the three teams are four games ahead of 7th place Marshall, they will occupy the 4th through 6th seeds in Houston.

In the battle for the final two playoff spots, Marshall hosts #1 Rice while UAB hosts Tulane and UCF travels to Southern Miss. The Thundering Herd enter the final weekend one game ahead of the other two teams and owns the tiebreaker over UAB or in the event of a 3-way tie. The Blazers own the tiebreaker against UCF, while the Golden Knights own the tiebreaker against Marshall.

The action gets underway early this weekend, as Rice and Marshall play at Appalachian Power Park in Charleston at 1:00 (Central) Thursday afternoon. The other games are all in the evening, with UCF at Southern Miss and East Carolina at Memphis starting and 6:30 and Tulane and UAB squaring off at 7:00 (all times Central).