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2024 American Conference Baseball Tournament: Preview, schedule, how to watch

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The American Conference Baseball Tournament is set to begin in Clearwater, FL. Here’s how to watch and what to be looking for this week.

The final weekend of regular season play saw teams jockeying for position, but now the American Conference Baseball Tournament field is finally set. The top eight squads will square off with hopes of an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament and their chance to play for a trip to the College World Series. The bottom two teams in the standings: Memphis and South Florida, will be watching from home with all six of the former C-USA additions reaching their inaugural AAC Tournament field.

All games will be streamed on ESPN+ with the exception of the tournament championship, available on ESPN News. The tournament runs from Tuesday, May 21 to Sunday, May 26. The full schedule and updated bracket are available on the American Conference Baseball Tournament website.

Assessing the field

The favorite | East Carolina has been the most complete team in this conference from start to finish. The only ranked squad, the Pirates are the clear frontrunners and boast the ability to beat teams with their arms and their bats.

The contender | UTSA didn’t finish far behind ECU in the conference standings and won the head-to-head series with the Pirates earlier this season. The Roadrunners are talented, albeit inconsistent. When they’re at their best they’re hard to beat.

The dark horse | A team with a couple of quality starters can make a run in tournament play. In this league, UAB gits the bill. Both Blazye Berry and Colin Daniel boast top five ERAs in the conference. If they start hot and make the winners bracket, UAB will have a shot.

The wild card | Tulane has the ability to bludgeon opponents with their bats. The Green Wave led the league with 80 hores and finished second in slugging percentage. If they can cut down on strikeouts and run into a few pitches, they have the tools to pull off an upset or two.

The bracket

The opening day of games will take place on Tuesday, May 21:

Game 1 – 9:00 AM | (5) UAB vs (4) Wichita State

Game 2 – approx. 12:30 PM | (1) ECU vs (8) Rice

Game 3 – 4:00 PM | (7) Charlotte vs (2) UTSA

Game 4 – approx. 7:30 PM | (6) FAU vs (3) Tulane

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AAC Baseball: Lots on the line in final weekend

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Every team is alive in the AAC Baseball conference tournament hunt and the regular season title remains up for grabs in the final weekend of the season.

SCHOOL CONF OVERALL NEXT

Notable storylines results

1. Pirates and Roadrunners and the battle for first place

Things couldn’t be much closer at the top of the conference.  UTSA has a one game leader over UTSA, but the Roadrunners took the conference series over the Pirates, giving them the tiebreaker. If ECU sweeps Rice, they take the conference crown. If they fail to win three more, that opens the door for UTSA and other possible permutations. ECU has lost four straight AAC games entering the final weekend.

2. Memphis a longshot

Memphis does have two series wins, but one of them (over Tulane) is irrelevant because of how far ahead the Green Wave are over the Tigers in the standings. The head to head over Rice might be pivotal, though, depending on how these next three games go. They have be far the most tenuous path to the postseason and would need help, most likely from Rice and USF, to advance to Clearwater.

3. Who has tiebreakers over who?

As this league has already seen in men’s and women’s basketball in recent months, tiebreakers get extremely complicated when we’ve got three or four (or even more) teams tied with identical records. From there, the tiebreaker rules stipulated best records in the tied pair and get more complicated from there.

Rather than try and spell out every scenario — that’s a lot to type — here’s a brief rundown of the series each team has won this year. Read this as the team before the parenthesis has the head-to-head tiebreaker over the subsequent teams.

ECU: UAB, FAU, Charlotte, Wichita State, Memphis, USF
UTSA: ECU, Tulane, Charlotte, Memphis, UAB, USF
Tulane: USF, FAU, Wichita State, ECU
Wichita State: UAB, Rice, FAU, UTSA, Charlotte
FAU: Charlotte, Memphis, USF
UAB: Tulane, Charlotte, FAU, Memphis
Charlotte: USF, Memphis, Rice
Rice: UAB, USF, UTSA, FAU
USF: Memphis, Wichita State
Memphis: Rice, Tulane

4. Series to watch

Rice at ECU and UTSA at FAU are both fascinating matchups. One side of the pairing is playing for their postseason lives. The other can win the league outright if things go well. Then add the extra dynamic of Rice owning the head-to-head tiebreaker over FAU, taking two of three from the other Owls this past weekend.

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AAC Baseball: Standings tight entering the home stretch

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Three weeks remain in the regular season and the  AAC Baseball conference title race is beginning to take shape.

SCHOOL CONF OVERALL

Notable storylines results

1. ECU’s title to lose

The Pirates entered the year as the unquestioned favorite to win the American Conference crown. Through the majority of the regular season, there’s been no reason to doubt their place atop the league standings. Only three regular-season losses have the Pirates in the hunt for a National Seed. While it’s still mathematically possible for UTSA to catch them, the odds are certainly in their favor to finish the job.

2. Rice is cooking (more)

Rice baseball is one of the reasons ECU is currently enjoying a two-game lead in the standings. While the Pirates were taking care of business against Memphis over the weekend, Rice was taking a series from UTSA, who entered the weekend tied atop the league standings with ECU. Now the Roadrunners are two games back and the Owls are in the mix to make the field as winners of eight of their last ten.

3. Who will avoid the chopping block?

There are 10 teams in the league this year and only eight spots in the conference tournament. That means two teams are going to be staying home in a few weeks and the battle for those last spots is going to come down to the wire. Three games separate the 3-seed and the last-place team in the standings (Memphis). And even if the Tigers have another tough weekend, we could be looking at seven teams for six spots.

4. What’s on deck?

There are a host of hugely important series this weekend between those middle-of-the-pack teams. Charlotte hosts Rice and FAU hosts FAU. Memphis might be in a do-or-die set with Tulane and if UTSA has any hopes of contending for a regular season title, they absolutely have to beat Wichita State at home. USF at ECU rounds out the conference slate.

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Rice Baseball takes series from league-leading UTSA

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Rice Baseball took two out of three from league-leading UTSA, securing their third straight conference win to get back in the mix in the AAC.

FRIDAY | Rice 9 – UTSA 8 (10 innings)

Things were looking up when Tobias Motley and Ben Dukes each delivered two-run home runs in the second inning on Friday night, putting the Owls up 4-1 with Parker Smith on the mound. Smith would run into some trouble in the fourth, but leave the game in the sixth inning having staked Rice to a 7-3 advantage.

Last Time Out: Rice Baseball sweeps USF

Tom Vincent and Davion Hickson got Rice to the ninth inning with a three-run lead, but Hickson suffered a rare blown save, allowing UTSA to tie the game in the top of the ninth. Garrett Stratton would come to the rescue, getting out of the ninth without allowing the Owls to fall behind and setting up a walk-off win. Motley led off the inning with a triple and scored on a squeeze bunt by Jacob Devenny.

SATURDAY | Rice 9 – UTSA 3

It was all Owls from the jump on Saturday. Rice loaded the bases with two outs in the first then picked up a pair of clutch hits: a bases-clearing RBI single from Nathan Becker to go up 3-0 and then a two-run home run from Trey Duffield.

As if that wasn’t enough, Rice followed that up with three runs in the second, taking advantage of errant UTSA pitching and an RBI single from Pierce Gallo to go up 8-0 midway through the second.

Handed a commanding lead, JD McCracken bore down and tossed another gem. He made it all the way to the ninth inning before being lifted for Jackson Blank, who picked up the final two outs.

SUNDAY | UTSA 4 – Rice 2

Seemingly out of nowhere, a pitcher’s duel broke out in the series finale. Rice’s Tucker Alch squared off with UTSA’s Ulises Quiroga for the better part of six innings with neither man ceding much to his opposition. Ben Dukes was able to sneak a two-run home run just inside the right-field foul pole in the third, but that was the only score either starter yielded on the day.

More: Jose Cruz Jr. and the trajectory of Rice Baseball

Rice maintained a slim 2-0 lead from that point onward, keeping the game in check until UTSA broke through with a four-run rally in the top of the eighth. The Roadrunners struck six hits in the frame, including a go-ahead two-run home run off Garrett Stratton. That would prove to be the deciding swing.

THREE FOR THE ROAD

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1. Loud and clear

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ON DECK | at Lamar (Tues), at Charlotte (Fri-Sun)

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Rice Baseball soars past USF with resounding sweep

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Rice Baseball released weeks of pent-up frustration on the USF Bulls, routing their hosts in three straight games for their first-ever AAC sweep.

FRIDAY | Rice 13 – USF 4

Parker Smith had to earn every bit of his 6.2 inning outing on Friday night, allowing eight hits and two walks as he battled and worked through trouble, keeping USF to single runs in the first, second and fourth innings, respectively. While Smith did what he could to keep his team in the mix, the bats slowly got warmed up and began to contribute on their own.

Last Time Out: Rice Baseball takes series from UAB

“After we went one round through everybody started to get a little bit better,” head coach Jose Cruz Jr. said. “We started to have better at bats.” Those at bats started with singular runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. Treyton Rank opened the door wider with a three-run blast in the seventh before all doubts were erased with an emphatic five-run ninth to put the game out of reach.

SATURDAY | Rice 10 – USF 6

The Rice bats delivered a crooked number in the fourth inning on Saturday, culminating with a clutch two-out, two-RBI double from Rank to put the visitors in front 5-2.

With the Bulls on the ropes, JD McCracken picked up right where Smith left off, navigating through a potent USF lineup as best he could before being lifted in midway through the sixth inning after four runs had been charged to his ledger. That total didn’t grow thanks to Davion Hickson, who stranded two runners in McCracken’s final frame, getting the Owls back into the dugout with a chance to turn the tide.

USF would get back within two in the following innings until Rice broke things open with another four-run frame, this time in the eighth. Eric Correa, Tobias Motely and Rank delivered the RBI hits, putting Rice way in front and ensuring a series-clinching win.

SUNDAY | Rice 10 – USF 3

Seeking their first-ever AAC sweep, the Rice bats came ready to roll for the series finale. Pierce Galloe put Rice in front with an RBI double in the second before his teammates expanded that lead in the third, highlighted by a bases-clearing double from Trey Duffield and a follow-up RBI double from Manny Garza to put Rice in front 6-0 early.

USF would get to Rice starter Tucker Alch in the fourth, putting three runs on the board, but that would be all for the hometown team. Jackson Blank and Garrett Stratton put up zeroes for the remainder of the game as the offense added two more runs apiece in the eighth and ninth to secure the sweep.

THREE FOR THE ROAD

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ON DECK | vs UTSA (Fri-Sun)

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