The Cougars, who received an automatic bid to the NCAA Baseball Tournament after winning their second Conference USA tournament championship Sunday in New Orleans, were slotted as a No. 3 seed in the College Station Regional, hosted by Texas A’M, when the tournament pairings were announced Monday.
UH (39-22) will open the double-elimination tournament against No. 2 seed Dallas Baptist (37-17) at 12:30 p.m. Friday at Olsen Field. Top-seeded Texas A’M and fourth-seeded Illinois-Chicago will play at 6:30 p.m. Friday.
The Cougars, who defeated Marshall 3-2 in the C-USA championship game, are in the postseason for the first time since 2006, when they were a No. 2 seed in the Norman (Okla.) Regional. That squad was eliminated after going 0-2 in the regional.
The Cougars’ postseason chances for this year were hanging by a thread after they were swept by crosstown rival Rice in a three-game series from May 9-11. They were 30-21 and 11-10 in C-USA at that point.
The Cougars, however, were a different team after that.
They swept Marshall in their final regular-season series and won five of their six games at the C-USA tournament, including defeating Alabama-Birmingham twice in elimination games Saturday to advance to the C-USA championship game.
Having won eight of their last nine games and their first C-USA tournament title in eight years, the Cougars are playing like head coach Rayner Noble envisioned they would at some point this season.
"We went back that Monday (May 12, following the end of the Silver Glove Series), and we regrouped, and we learned how to compete again," Noble told the Houston Chronicle after Sunday’s win. "This team, it had it in them, and they figured it out that Monday after that Sunday at Rice. It’s just a beautiful thing when you see guys come together and really, really compete, and that’s what we’ve been doing ever since then."
