Marshall-Southern Miss Moved To Friday 5 p.m.

"Rain, rain go away" is much more than a childhood song to the baseball teams, players and coaches at the 2008 Conference USA Baseball Tournament at Tulane in New Orleans, sponsored by Entergy. Only one game was played on Thursday, meaning a huge change in the playing brackets were in order by 8 p.m. this evening. MU will play at 5 p.m. EDT Friday versus Southern Miss, heard in town on ESPN 930AM.

Marshall, the No. 6 seed, upset the home team on Wednesday as the Thundering Herd topped No. 3 Tulane, 10-5, thanks to three home runs, Steve Blevins complete game and Adam Yeagers five steals, four runs, two walks, two hits and two runs batted in. Other Wednesday finals included No. 4 Houston sneaking by No. 5 East Carolina, 5-4 in 10 innings; No. 1 Rice falling 8-2 to the No. 8 seed, UAB (only the second time since Conference USA was founded in 1995 that a eight-seed beat a one-seed); and No. 2 Southern Miss holding off No. 7 UCF by 8-5.

The only game of the day competed a shocker that no one saw coming when the No. 3-ranked Rice Owls were eliminated from the tournament by East Carolina. The Pirates were down 0-3 before rallying for a 4-3 win that sent Rice packing for Houston. Rice, along with the C-USA Tournament winner and perhaps a couple of other league teams will head to the NCAA Tournament. That game, however, had both rain and lighting delays, and a 10 a.m. start was not finished until about 4 p.m. in the afternoon.

With Houston scheduled to meet UAB in the upper bracket, and UCF and Tulane still to play an elimination game in the lower bracket, Marshall and Southern Miss were pushed back to 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon. The loser of the 1:30 p.m. game between the Cougars and the Blazers will have to come back at 8:30 p.m. to play East Carolina in another elimination game. Marshall will play on Saturday win or lose, at a time to be set after the games wrap up on Friday night.

Friday, May 23
Game 6:(3) Tulane vs. (7) UCF, 10:00 a.m
Game 7:(4) Houston vs. (8) UAB, 1:30 p.m.
Game 8:(2) Southern Miss vs. (6) Marshall, 5:00 p.m.
Game 9:(5) East Carolina vs. Game 7 Loser, 8:30 p.m.

Saturday, May 24
Game 10 UCF/Tulane winner vs. Marshall/Southern Miss loser, 10 a.m.
Game 11 Houston/UAB winner vs. East Carolina-Houston/UAB loser, 1:30 p.m.
Game 12 Marshall/Southern Miss winner vs. UCF/Tulane/Southern Miss/Marshall winner, 5 p.m.
Game 13 Houston/UAB winner vs. ECU/UH/UAB binner, 8:30 p.m. (if necessary)

Sunday, May 25
Game 14 MU/USM winner vs. UCF/Tulane/MU/Southern Miss winner, 9:00 a.m. (if necessary)
Championship Game 2:00 p.m., CBS College Sports Network (Channel 174 on Comcast-Huntington, W.Va.)
All listed times Eastern Daylight (New Orleans on Central Daylight, one hour behind EDT). All Marshall games on radio ESPN 930 AM in Huntington ( and a pod cast is available at www.wrvc.am on the web after games).