PEARL — Southern Miss finally snapped its Trustmark Park scoring drought Wednesday. The losing streak, however, continued.

Memphis scored nine runs in the top of the seventh inning and routed the Golden Eagles 14-3 in the opening game of the Conference USA Tournament.

The loss put Southern Miss into a must-win game today at 3 p.m. against Houston. The only chance for the Golden Eagles to reach Sunday’s championship game is to beat Houston and Rice on Saturday night, and get some help from the other teams in their pod.

Southern Miss (30-24), which has an RPI in the high 80s, must win the C-USA Tournament to reach the NCAA Tournament. A loss today would effectively end its season.

“There’s no question what we have to do. We have to win tomorrow, and we have to win Saturday. We have to win and we have to have a little bit of help. But the only thing we can control is what we do, so we’re going to try and take care of our business first,” USM third baseman Bradley Roney said.

Wednesday’s loss was the fifth straight for Southern Miss at Trustmark Park. It dropped its last two games at the 2011 C-USA Tournament, plus midweek games this season against Mississippi State and Ole Miss.

The losing streak included three consecutive shutouts and a stretch of 362⁄3 scoreless innings that ended Wednesday with Blake Brown’s RBI single in the bottom of the third inning. Even that small moment of triumph was tinged with, and followed by, more frustration.

Southern Miss left six runners on base, four of them in scoring position, in the first four innings. That left little breathing room when Memphis made its surge in the seventh inning.

“I messed up in the first inning. I left two runners at second and third and I could have gotten them in. That’s still eating at me right now. It’s going to eat at me until I get back on this field, at least,” Brown said. “I feel bad for Houston.”

Coach Scott Berry was banking on that frustration to raise the Golden Eagles from the ashes of Wednesday’s loss and at least give them a chance to extend the season. At the very least, he’d like the team to learn from it.

“It was not a good loss,“ Berry said. “Where we are in this program, we usually respond from that. We have in years past.”