A blown lead, a late baserunning blunder, and a couple of days of shaky offense turned Southern Miss into a spectator for the rest of the Conference USA Tournament.

C.J. Chatham drove in two runs with a single in the sixth inning to give Florida Atlantic the lead for good, and the Owls went on to beat Southern Miss 5-4 in a C-USA Tournament elimination game Friday night in Hattiesburg.

Florida Atlantic (40-16) advanced to today’s semifinal round against UAB, and will have to win twice to get to Sunday’s championship game.

Southern Miss (36-18-1) saw its regular season end, and will now wait for Monday’s NCAA Tournament selection show to see if it did enough to keep its season going.

“Honestly, I think we deserve to be in. We finished the regular season very, very strong, with 13 straight wins. We’ve won our last 14 out of 16. We played some good clubs and beat some good clubs,” Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said. “We’re 4-0 against the SEC. We swept the Sun Belt (Conference) regular season champion in South Alabama. We’ve done some pretty good things, so I think that we deserve to be in there because we’re playing really good at the end.”

The Golden Eagles, though, were a bit uneven this week. They brought a 13-game winning streak into the tournament, then got shut out by UAB in their opener and didn’t score until the 12th inning in an elimination game against Old Dominion.

On Friday night, the Golden Eagles were held scoreless again until scoring three runs in the sixth inning. An RBI double by Chase Scott, an RBI single by Matt Durst, and a sacrifice fly by Austin Roussel gave them a 3-1 lead.

It didn’t last.

Florida Atlantic rallied for four runs in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead for good. Billy Endris delivered an RBI double, then scored the tying run on a single by Ricky Santiago.

Three batters later, Chatham singled with the bases loaded to give the Owls a 5-3 lead.

Southern Miss got one run back in the eighth inning, but stranded the tying run at first. In the ninth, Connor Barron led off with a walk and was bunted to second base to put the tying run in scoring position.

Taylor Braley then hit a grounder to short, and Barron was caught off the bag at second. He was tagged out after a brief rundown, and FAU closer Seth McGarry struck out Scott to end the game.

McGarry capped a strong performance by FAU’s bullpen. Four relievers combined to allow one unearned run over the last 3 2/3 innings. Reily Monkman (6-1) got the win, and McGarry earned his fifth save of the season.

Berry, while disappointed with the loss, said he was happy with his team’s effort.

“I’m very proud of our guys. That was a hard fought game against a very good Florida Atlantic team. They ended up as the No. 2 seed for a reason,” Berry said.