Wednesday, March 12th, 9:30 p.m. (et).

FACTS & STATS: Site: FedExForum (18,400) -- Memphis, Tennessee. Television: Local. Home Record: Rice 1-12, Southern Miss 11-3. Away Record: Rice 1-13, Southern Miss 3-9. Neutral Record: Rice 1-1, Southern Miss 3-1. Conference Record: Rice 0-16, Southern Miss 9-7. Series Record: Rice leads, 3-2.

GAME NOTES: The lowly Rice Owls are the 12th seed in the 2008 Conference USA Tournament, and they will attempt to upset the fifth-seeded Southern Miss Golden Eagles in the first round tonight. The winner of this game moves on to Thursday's quarterfinal round to do battle with fourth-seeded UCF. Rice has only won three of it 29 games this season and finished 0-16 against conference foes. The Owls enter this tournament with a 19-game losing skid, and while many of the losses have been by a fairly narrow margin, there have also been a fair share of blowouts along the way. As for Southern Miss, it is 17-13 overall and has won nine of its 16 games against league opponents. The Golden Eagles closed out the regular season with back-to-back wins and figure to enter this first-round game with confidence. Southern Miss beat Rice by a 71-53 final back on January 26th, but the Owls still hold a 3-2 edge in the all-time series.

Injuries have hit Rice hard this season, and while the stat page shows four double-digit scorers, none of the four have played every game this season. In fact, three of those individuals will be out of action for this tournament, including Rodney Williams, who is sidelined with a hand injury. Williams owns a team-high average of 11.2 ppg, but his 29.9 percent shooting from the field is embarrassing. Patrick Britton (11.1 ppg) will be expected to be productive at the offensive end, but he isn't the type of player capable of taking over a game. Rice is last in the conference in scoring with 56.1 ppg, and the team is also last in field goal percentage, scoring margin, assists and assist/turnover ratio.

The player to watch for Southern Miss is Jeremy Wise, a Second Team All- Conference USA performer. Wise averages 19.0 ppg and has dished out 125 assists. R.L. Horton adds 11.8 ppg to the mix, and Courtney Beasley is contributing 11.1 ppg. The Golden Eagles are scoring 73.6 ppg while allowing 67.4 ppg, and they rank in the middle of the pack in both departments. Without question, the strength of the team is its work on the glass, as it owns the best rebounding margin in the league at +6.8 rpg, even better than the mark posted by Memphis which finished undefeated in league play. As for a couple of areas of weakness, Southern Miss is last in C-USA in steals and next to last in assists.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that Rice will knock off Southern Miss this evening. This first-round game is as good as a bye for the Golden Eagles.

Predicted Outcome

Southern Miss 74, Rice 56