In a press release this afternoon, the league announced that UAB and Middle Tennessee will play Sunday, at 1:30 in Murfreesboro. UAB led the West division for much of the year but has only the 2-1 record. UTSA, by virtue of their blowout win at home over North Texas is now at 5-2 in the division — a .714 percentage. UAB, with a win over MTSU would move to .750 with a 3-1 record and take the west spot in the league championship on Friday December 18th.
CUSA also announced a last regular season game matchup for December 10-12 would be announced “no later than Sunday, Dec 6th”
The current West standings are as follows:
- UTSA 5-2 – .714
- UAB 2-1 – .667
- LT 3-2 – .600
- UNT 2-3 – .400
- Rice 1-2 – .333
- USM 1-4 – .200
- UTEP 0-3 – .000
The East looks like this:
- Marshall 4-0 – 1.000
- FAU 4-1 – .800
- Charlotte 2-1 – .667
- WKU 3-3 – .500
- MTSU 2-4 – .333
- FIU 0-3 – .000
The current schedule is as follows
- Tuesday, Dec 1 — WKU at Charlotte
The 49ers have an opportunity to move into division competition this week with a win at home over the Tops.
- Thursday, Dec 3 — LT at UNT
Tech needs a win here to get to .667 and in the conversation.
- Saturday, Dec 5 — FIU at Charlotte, Rice at Marshall, FAU at GSU
If any game should be rescheduled it is the FAU game away. If everything goes right, Charlotte could be 4-1 by this point. If Marshall holds serve, they will be 5-0 in the conference play. It should be noted that FAU beat Charlotte, and Marshall beat FAU. If Marshall were to slip they hold the tiebreaker by the old rules.
- Sunday, Dec 6 — UAB at MTSU
This was the newly announced game. If UAB were to win this game1 they would be 3-1 and have a .750 percentage, putting them above UTSA.
Presumably UAB would be scheduled to play another game on the 12th. It stands to reason that they could make up the NT game, but they are currently scheduled to play Rice. If the east final matchups were to be redone it makes sense to take the top two teams and play, but if say Marshall were to be scheduled to take on FAU again it would seem unfair to have given FAU another shot.
Same thing with UAB. They have already beaten UTSA, and replaying the game would be fun for us, but a little unfair to the Blazers to pin their hopes on having to beat that team again.
Still, beggars cannot be choosers. The league should be commended for trying to find something like a fair way to determine the league champion.
UAB last played back-to-back here two seasons ago in the final regular season game and then the subsequent title game. They split but won the title matchup ↩
[…] played the only game of this round. Early today (Monday) the Charlotte and WKU game was cancelled. Just Sunday we learned that the league was going to try some dynamism to allow teams with a chance of earning the title […]