Closing stretch opens path to C-USA tourney

Last year, Conference USA opted to split its men’s basketball regular season into two phases. Through the first seven weeks of league play, each of the 14 teams would face one opponent twice and all other members once. Then the conference would be divided into three groups, with teams playing those in their group over the final four games.

“With the goals to improve seeding and increase the number of teams that advance to the postseason, we viewed this as a great opportunity to enhance our top teams’ résumés by providing them additional quality games within their conference schedule,” said C-USA commissioner Judy MacLeod, whose conference hasn’t put more than one team in the NCAA Tournament since 2012. “This will provide a real-time analysis to create competitive matchups for teams and their fans.”

Through the final week this season of what has been called traditional play, a tight pack occupied the middle of the standings. By Saturday, Rice had lost four of its last five games to place 11th in the league.

Per the new scheduling arrangement, C-USA’s first group consists of the league’s top five teams, headed by Old Dominion (21-6, 11-3 C-USA). The second has the sixth through 10th-place teams, and the final group contains the bottom four — where Rice resides.

Although the Owls (10-17, 5-9 CUSA) defeated two of the four 7-7 teams immediately ahead of them (Marshall and Louisiana Tech), losses to Florida Atlantic and Florida International (both 7-7) relegated Rice to the third grouping.

“When you go down our league and you look at the results, you look at the number of games that went down to the last minute ... I think it’s astounding,” Rice coach Scott Pera said of the parity across C-USA. “It’s been the most balanced in my five years at Rice. That’s for sure.”

Rice’s first game of bonus play comes Saturday at UTEP (8-17, 311), followed by a home contest against Middle Tennessee (8-19, 5-9) on March 3. The Owls finish the regular season with a series against Charlotte (6-19, 3-11) — on the road March 6 and at Tudor Fieldhouse on March 9.

When bonus play concludes, the top 12 teams in the standings will progress to the conference tournament, which runs March 13-16 in Frisco.

The arrangement bodes relatively well for Rice, whose 13thplace finish kept it out of last season’s conference tournament. With two victories in their last four games, the Owls can be assured of finishing in the top dozen.

“It’s unique with the situation we’re in,” Pera said. “If you want to have an opportunity to assure yourself a spot in the conference tournament, take care of your business, control what you can.”