A wild opening day at the 2004 Conference USA Tournament is in the books. In the highest-scoring opening day since the league's inaugural tournament in 1996 (58 total runs), three of the four lower seeded teams emerged victorious. Day one was capped by a 9-5 victory by No. 5 seed Houston over No. 4 TCU. Thanos Papavasiliou had a three-run home run and Cole Bruce had three hits for the Cougars. UH advances to play top-seeded East Carolina, the only higher seed to win on Wednesday.

ECU posted an impressive 13-2 win over Louisville in the third game of the day. Ryan Norwood and John Poppert were each 3-for-3 with four RBI to lead the Pirates charge as ECU won its school-record 48th game of the season.

Earlier, UAB defeated Tulane for the third consecutive time this season, 10-4. Cole Helms was 3-for-4 with two RBI and Eugene Rodriguez hit a three-run home run for the Blazers, who will meet Memphis in the winner's bracket on Wednesday.

The loss by the Green Wave means that for the first time in league history, two teams that played in the championship game one year will face each other in the first elimination game of the following year's tournament.

In the first game of the day, Jarrett Grube struck out 10 and Jordan Hart tied a conference record with five hits, including two home runs, as Memphis defeated Southern Miss, 10-5. It was the first win by the Tigers over the Golden Eagles in a conference tournament since the 1987 Metro Conference Tourney.

The championship game of the tournament on Sunday, May 30 will be televised by affiliates of the Conference USA Television Network and CSTV: College Sports Television. The tournament champion receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship.

Conference USA Baseball Tournament
(Houston, Texas)

Wed., May 26
Game One
(6) Memphis 10, (3) Southern Miss 5
Game Two
(7) UAB 10, (2) Tulane 4
Game Three
(1) East Carolina 13, (8) Louisville 2 4:00p
Game Four
(5) Houston 9, (4) TCU 5 7:30p

Thu., May 27
Game Five
Southern Miss vs. Tulane 9:00a
Game Six
Louisville vs. TCU 12:30p
Game Seven
Memphis vs. UAB 4:00p
Game Eight
East Carolina vs. Houston 7:30p

Fri., May 28
Winner Game Five vs. Loser Game Seven 3:00p
Winner Game Six vs. Loser Game Eight 6:30p



All times Central.