While the Houston Cougars gave the South Carolina Gamecocks quite a battle in the Liberty Bowl on Friday, the impact of the loss goes beyond the campus of UH. The loss, combined with the bowl losses by Rice, East Carolina and Tulsa, means Conference USA football teams are now 0-4 in bowl games this season. That 0-4 mark is easily the worst in all of Division I-A college football and leaves many fans scratching their heads.

Meanwhile, despite a 28-27 halftime lead for the Cougars, the South Carolina defense held Houston to just a late 4th-quarter TD in the second half. While Houston did get the ball with a chance later in the game, they were unable to move the chains as Steve Spurrier earned his 1st bowl win as the head coach at South Carolina.

The 2006-2007 bowl season wraps up for C-USA football on January 7th in the GMAC Bowl as the Golden Eagles of Southern Miss face the Ohio Bobcats. Southern Miss will look to end C-USA football’s 5-game losing streak against the MAC in the GMAC Bowl.

Throughout the 2006-2007 basketball season we will keep you updated on where the C-USA teams stand in the RPI rankings. Here is our first update for December 26th.

#17 - SMU - 9-1
#23 - Memphis - 9-3
#64 - UAB - 7-5
#125 - Tulsa - 9-2
#137 - Houston - 5-5
#148 - Southern Miss - 8-2
#154 - UCF - 8-2
#162 - Rice - 5-4
#207 - Tulane - 6-4
#223 - UTEP - 7-6
#226 - Marshall - 3-8
#324 - East Carolina - 4-6

After having five Conference USA member schools receive bowl bids in 2006, it appeared as though it was a season to make a statement for the strength of C-USA. But with three bowl game results in, the New Orleans Bowl, PapaJohns.com Bowl and the Armed Forces Bowl, Conference USA teams are 0-3. What is worse, none of those three games were really close with Tulsa’s 12-point loss to Utah being the closest of the three games. Most surprising of all has got to be Rice’s 24-point loss to Sun Belt Champion Troy. Losing to a Sun Belt team is not something that fans of any Conference USA team takes lightly, and after Rice’s impressive 7-5 regular season and bowl berth it severely dampens one of the most successful seasons in recent memory for the Rice football program. 

A couple of weeks ago we reported that C-USA was sending 5 teams to bowl game. Now CUSA Fans and the Dash Fans Network of Independent College Sports Fans Sites is pleased to announce that our PapaJohns.com Bowl preview is now live over at CUSA-fans.com

With 6 games played on Saturday, C-USA basketball programs saw wins from two of the top 2006-2007 teams and struggles from the others. With a 68-40 win over Centenary, the SMU Mustangs advanced their record to 8-1 on the season while Tulsa is also 8-1 after a 83-54 win over Prairie View A&M. Meanwhile, Marshall fell @ Princeton 61-45, Virginia Commonwealth knocked off UAB 53-44, Southern Miss lost to #9 Alabama 77-64 and UTEP fell 68-62 to New Mexico State.

Last week we reported that C-USA was sending 5 teams to bowl game. Now CUSA Fans and the Dash Fans Network of Independent College Sports Fans Sites is pleased to announce that our New Orleans Bowl preview is now live over at CUSA-fans.com

East Carolina will have a large vacancy to fill in its special teams in 2007 due to the departure of Ryan Dougherty. The Orlando-native has provided the Pirates with a tremendous weapon in the kicking game over the past four seasons and is finishing his career for the purple and gold in style.

The 6′1″, 232-pound Dougherty has been an integral part in the Pirates’ success this season. He has helped “boom” East Carolina to its first bowl game since 2001.

You need not look back any further than the season finale’ at NC State to observe the positive impact Dougherty has on this team. Needing a win to ensure themselves of a bowl bid, the Pirates received a clutch performance from their senior punter against one of the nation’s best punt returners in NC State’s Darrell Blackman. Dougherty averaged 43.6 yards on seven attempts and allowed East Carolina to win the battle for field position by pinning the Wolfpack inside its own 20-yard line on six different occasions.

> Read the entire story on CUSA-fans.com

The UCF Golden Knights have finally fallen from the ranks of the unbeaten. After an impressive start to the season which saw them start 6-0, UCF fell tonight @ Minnesota 74-63.

Box Score

The UCF @ Minnesota game marked the only C-USA basketball game tonight.

Bob Toledo, the former head coach at UCLA from 1995-2002, was announced today as the new head football coach to take over Conference USA’s Tulane Green Wave. The 60-year old coach was most recently the Offensive Coordinator at New Mexico after 8 years at UCLA where he went 49-32 and two Pac-10 Conference titles.

ESPN story

CUSA-fans.com is pleased to announce the launch of our new East Carolina Sports Fans page. Because of the thorough coverage of ECU football & basketball on CUSA-fans.com the site we have decided that we need a single place for East Carolina fans to go to find all of the ECU-related football & basketball articles (as well as baseball in the coming months).

http://www.cusa-fans.com/football/cusa-team-articles/ecu.html