And then there were two: C-USA title down to Tech, UAB

A wild and crazy Conference USA regular season is about to wrap up with just two contenders left standing.

Louisiana Tech, which maintained its stranglehold on first place in Saturday's win over Texas-San Antonio, and UAB are the only two teams with a chance to win the C-USA title.

Tech is a game up on UAB and earned at least a share of the title Saturday. The Bulldogs can wrap up an outright title next week against Southern Miss.

UAB, meanwhile, nearly fell out of the race for good, needing three overtimes to beat Middle Tennessee on Saturday.

The weekend began as a potential three-team race with UTEP and UAB a game behind Tech. The Miners stumbled against the Bulldogs on Thursday, then blew a huge lead late Saturday at Southern Miss in a game where UTEP coach Tim Floyd was suspended for his ejection Thursday.

In a span of 48 hours, UTEP went from potentially being in the driver's seat for the title to a team in jeopardy of not even earning a first-round bye.

Although Tech has only Southern Miss left on the schedule, UAB, Old Dominion, UTEP and Western Kentucky — the four teams battling for first-round byes — all have two games left to play. ODU, UTEP and WKU are tied for third at 11-5.

There are still multiple scenarios that can play out, hence why Tech hasn't wrapped up the No. 1 seed in the C-USA tournament and an automatic berth to the NIT.

Since tiebreakers are based off final standings, it's hard to predict how the leaderboard will end up, but here's what you need to know.

As previously stated, Tech's path is simple — win against Southern Miss and cut down the nets inside the Thomas Assembly Center.

Should Tech lose snd UAB win out, leaving both teams at 14-4, there are several different things that can happen.

Normal tiebreaker rules go to head-to-head wins between the two teams, but Tech and UAB split the season series (Tech won in Ruston, UAB won in Birmingham, Alabama).

The next tiebreaker essentially goes down the standings until an advantage is created. For example, if ODU and UTEP finish at 13-5 (all three teams in third likely won't finish with the same record because ODU and WKU meet in the regular season finale), then Tech would win the tiebreaker with a 2-1 record against ODU and UTEP compared to UAB's record of 1-1 — Tech beat UTEP twice and lost to ODU, while UAB beat ODU and lost to UTEP.

Another scenario is if UTEP and WKU are tied for second at 13-5. Again, Tech wins the tiebreaker since it went 3-0 against WKU and UTEP while UAB split the games.

The most complicated one happens if ODU and UTEP lose next Thursday then ODU beats WKU next Saturday to create a three-way tie at 12-6. Under this scenario, Tech would still win due to a 3-1 record against ODU/UTEP/WKU compared to UAB's 2-1 record.

Essentially, the common theme is Tech's two wins over UTEP, which further proves how important Thursday's win was.

The final scenario is if ODU, UTEP or WKU finish in sole possession of third place. This is the one where UAB can earn the No. 1 seed and NIT berth.

Since Tech lost to ODU and UAB beat ODU, UAB would earn the No. 1 seed if ODU finished alone in third.

If WKU finished third, Tech and UAB both have a 1.000 winning percentage against WKU at 1-0. The tiebreaker would then fall to the fourth-place team. If ODU finished fourth, UAB wins due to a 1-0 record and Tech's 0-1 record.

But if UTEP was fourth, or alone in third for that matter, Tech would win due to its 2-0 record and UAB's 0-1 record against the Miners.

If WKU were to finish in third with UTEP and ODU tied for fourth, it would go to the above scenario where Tech wins due to a 2-1 record vs. UTEP and ODU while UAB has a 1-1 record.

So in summary, if you're a Tech fan, you're first hoping for a win over Southern Miss and just hoping that ODU doesn't finish in sole possession of third place or WKU finished in third and ODU finished in fourth if Tech stumbles.

If you're a UAB fan, hope for a ton of upsets in the next two games and root for ODU/WKU and hope UTEP falls apart.

Then again, there might not be much rooting needed with the way Conference USA has played out this year.