FROM THE PRESS BOX: A C-USA BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP RETROSPECTIVE
 
C-USA Assistant Commissioner Russ Anderson, the league’s baseball communications/ops administrator, reflects on the 2020 season and the championships of seasons past, as the conference’s 25th season celebration comes to a close.
 
For many years I have referred to this week as one of my favorite work weeks of the year.  It is usually the time when I spend six full days at the ballpark, surrounded by great people, watching talented student-athletes and coaches play on glorious green fields under sunny skies, battling for the Conference USA Baseball Championship. 
 
For the first time in my 25 years of working for C-USA, I will not be at the ballpark this week, watching the next league champion be crowned following a week of exciting games.  Like so many things in our lives right now, the COVID-19 crisis has changed that plan.  I will miss not being around the diamond this week, just like we are all missing so many things in this current pandemic state of life.
 
While a 25th C-USA Baseball Champion will not be crowned, I wanted to take a look back at some of the great memories from the first 24 championships that have made it such an outstanding event.
 
The inaugural postseason tournament occurred in 1996 at Pete Taylor Park in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a place that has hosted more C-USA Championships than any other facility (six).  Offensive records were set that week that haven’t been topped yet and may never be broken. 
 
A total of 56 home runs were hit in the 14 games, along with six grand slams.  A quarter of a century later both high marks still stand.  And the closest they’ve come to matching the home run record is the 39 hit at Cougar Field in Houston in 2004.
 
The winning team in each of the first 13 games of that Championship scored at least nine runs, with eight reaching double-digits.  But, a funny thing happened in the final game of that inaugural postseason tournament: pitching returned.  Future major leaguer Jack Cressend struck out 11 and led Tulane to a 2-0 win over regular season champion South Florida, earning the league’s first automatic bid.
 
The C-USA Baseball Championship has seen six eventual College World Series squads begin their postseason runs in the event.
 
The league’s first CWS team came in 2001, although it was not how Tulane had envisioned the postseason run starting out.  The top-seeded Green Wave drew a tournament-opener against No. 8 Charlotte and Conference USA Pitcher of the Year John Maine.  The eventual nine-year MLB hurler shut down the explosive Tulane squad and sent the Green Wave into position to have to win five straight games over three days.  Tulane went out and did just that, punctuating their fourth C-USA postseason title in six years with a 21-4 triumph on Championship Sunday, sending the Green Wave into the NCAA Championship and on a journey that would end at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.
 
In 2005, Tulane was the No. 1-ranked team in the country when it made its way up the road to Southern Miss for the C-USA Championship.  Armed with three All-American players and the eventual National Coach of the Year in Rick Jones, the Green Wave rolled to the Sunday title game.  First team All-American RHP Lance Broadway led TCU in the final game as Tulane’s opponent.  But Mother Nature intervened on Championship Sunday.  Severe thunderstorms, hail and lightning hit Pete Taylor Park shortly before first pitch and did not let up.  That forced the cancellation of the Championship Game, so TCU and Tulane were named co-Champions in the only final game that has not been played.  The Green Wave would make its second trip to the College World Series, finishing the season with a 56-12 record.
 
In 2006 the Rice Owls were in their first season as a Conference USA member, just three years removed from a National Championship.  Hall of Fame head coach Wayne Graham had a roster loaded with 22 eventual professional players and that talented group posted the best regular season record in league history at 22-2.  Rice hosted the C-USA Championship at Reckling Park and the Owls did not slow down, rolling through the week with four straight convincing victories to capture the postseason title to go with its regular season crown and set the stage for the first of three straight College World Series appearances.  Rice would again take both titles the next season, before falling short of a three-peat of both crowns in 2008.
 
The 2009 Championship would see Rice win its third postseason championship in four seasons, but host Southern Miss would do enough in the event to solidify an NCAA berth and give retiring head coach Corky Palmer a proper place to complete his career.  The Golden Eagles knocked off No. 1 seed East Carolina two times and No. 4 Tulane once in the C-USA Championship to grab a spot in the NCAA Atlanta Regional.  After winning in the ATL, Southern Miss knocked off Florida twice in Gainesville to earn the school’s first trip to the College World Series.
 
Perhaps the most emotional Championship was the 2002 event in Kinston, North Carolina.  A few months prior to East Carolina joining the league, head coach Keith LeClair was diagnosed with ALS and was unable to coach his squad for the season. The Pirates were the host of the championship and LeClair went out to each game, sitting down the line in a specially-designed van equipped with a ventilator.
 
ECU entered the tournament as the No. 6 seed, but the team rallied behind its coach to top TCU and twice defeat USF to advance to the championship game. The Pirates squared off against top-seeded Houston, the No. 10-ranked team in the country at the time. Behind the bat of Ryan Jones, who knocked in three runs, including a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning, East Carolina claimed its first C-USA Championship with a 4-0 victory.
 
The team ran out to LeClair's van following each game of the tournament so the coach could take in the win with his players. When the Pirates won the C-USA Championship, they again ran out to LeClair and doused his van with a bucket of Gatorade so their coach could join in the celebration.
 
For a decade that sixth-seeded East Carolina squad remained the lowest-seeded team to win the C-USA Championship.  That changed in 2012 when No. 7 seed UAB parlayed strong pitching into its first league title.  In the pod play format, the Blazers allowed a combined four runs to reach the championship final.  UAB then blanked Memphis, 5-0, in the title game to earn the automatic bid to the NCAA Championship.
 
Three years later, UAB was back in the title game as the No. 6 seed.  But, the Blazers opponent, No. 8 seed FIU had caught fire during the week in Hattiesburg.  The Panthers bats hit a scorching .370 in the tournament with 13 extra-base hits, outscoring their four opponents 44-15.  The run was completed with an 8-2 title game victory that made FIU the first No. 8 seed in 20 C-USA Championships to win it all.
 
In each of the last four seasons Southern Miss has been a participant in the final game of the C-USA Championship, winning three times.  That run began with one of the most memorable defensive plays in championship in league history in 2016.  Rather than describe it, why don’t you watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re4EDrS3gyc&feature=youtu.be .  That defensive gem finished off a 3-2 Southern Miss win over Rice in front of a standing room-only crowd in Hattiesburg. 
 
Rice gained revenge the following year with a 5-4 victory over a Southern Miss team that had set a school record for victories, allowing the sixth-seeded Owls to extend their amazing streak of consecutive NCAA appearances to 23 years.  And once again, it came down to the final play of the game.  Before the largest crowd in C-USA postseason baseball history at MGM Park in Biloxi, Mississippi (5,216), Ryan Chandler launched a pitch over the head of the centerfielder for a double that scored pinch-runner Kendal Jeffries from second base with one out in bottom of the ninth, sending the Owls back to the NCAA’s.
 
The last two championships played each saw Southern Miss and Florida Atlantic meet in the final game in Biloxi.  No one involved in the 2018 Championship will ever forget the battles with weather that forced so many games to be delayed, postponed and even played out of order in order to give student-athletes proper rest time.  Somehow the title game was played as scheduled and the top-seeded Golden Eagles closed it out with a 12-3 win.  The first no-hitter in C-USA Championship history came in 2019, as Gabe Shepard threw 7 1/3 innings of no-hit ball, striking out a career-best 12 and allowing only one baserunner, before Cody Carroll and Hunter Stanley finished off the first no-no in a win that secured a title game spot.  The Southern Miss pitching continued to be strong the next day, shutting out a good hitting FAU team to a repeat title.
 
Over the first 24 C-USA Championships, there have been seven different seeds win the title and eight schools that have been crowned champs.  Rice has the most titles with seven, while Southern Miss and Tulane each own five among the 24 trophies that have been distributed. 
 
Unfortunately, we will not be handing out a 25^th trophy.  Instead I will spend some time this week thinking back to some of the amazing memories that I have being a part of every C-USA Championship played dating back to 1996.  I have watched so many talented student-athletes, worked with numerous talented coaches and administrators, shared stories and laughs with great people and carry hours of fond memories with me. 
 
Though I’m not able to be working at the C-USA Baseball Championship this week, I am already looking forward to the 2021 Championship.