Once his team bowed out of the Conference USA Tournament on Friday night, Southern Miss’ Scott Berry said he felt it had done enough to earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

And, truthfully, it might have — if a handful of other teams hadn’t done just a little bit more.

Southern Miss’ season officially came to an end Monday morning when it was not one of the 64 teams selected to participate in the NCAA Tournament. According to the NCAA selection committee, the Golden Eagles were one of the first four teams left out of the field.

Southern Miss (36-18-1) has not made the NCAA Tournament since 2011.

“I think, having been absent from it for four years, there’s no guarantees this time of year,” Berry said during a press conference on Monday. “To see us come as far as we did and not see your name up there, it’s tough.”

Southern Miss finished the regular season on a 13-game winning streak, but went 1-2 in the Conference USA Tournament. It was eliminated with a 5-4 loss to Florida Atlantic on Friday night.

While the Golden Eagles watched the rest of the C-USA Tournament play out on their home field at Pete Taylor Park, several other teams around the country played their way into the big tournament and bounced USM out.

Florida International, the No. 8 seed, won the C-USA Tournament despite having a 29-29 record and a No. 152 Ratings Percentage Index ranking — the formula used to determine at-large bids and seedings. The victory gave FIU an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Texas, ranked No. 92 in RPI, and No. 65 Michigan won the Big 12 and Big Ten tournaments, respectively, to also earn automatic berths.

Texas, Michigan and FIU were highly unlikely to earn bids without winning their conference tournaments. Each one that got in knocked a bubble team out, and Southern Miss was among the victims.

North Carolina, Missouri, Michigan State and Southern Miss were the first four teams left out of the NCAA Tournament field, selection committee chairman Dave Heeke said.

The last four teams in were Maryland, South Florida, Oregon and Clemson. All had lower RPIs than Southern Miss.

“Anytime you get to those points where you’re on the bubble and considering a number of teams, one thing that has struck me is this has compressed so much,” Heeke said on the NCAA Tournament selection show. “The fine lines that are drawn makes it very, very difficult. Teams are very similar. When we scrub it down, we look for those teams who show some performance metrics on the field in a deserving fashion to be in the field. All very worthy of being in the field (but) it gets to a point where we have to put them side by side and really look at what’s the best team.”

Berry also felt that the relative weakness of Conference USA, coupled with the conference tournament upsets, hurt Southern Miss’ cause.

Regular-season champion Rice (35-20 record, No. 38 RPI) and Florida Atlantic (40-17, No. 15 RPI) received at-large bids in addition to Florida International’s automatic berth.

“I think they were probably afraid to take four teams in our league, in all honesty,” Berry said. “What killed us was some of the teams like Texas winning on Sunday. There were just too many upsets, in our case.”

While Berry understood what sank his team’s tournament chances, he didn’t necessarily have to like it.

The Golden Eagles did win 14 of their last 16 games, even with the conference tournament flameout, and had a winning record against teams in the top 50 of the RPI rankings.

They also went 4-0 against SEC teams and twice beat Tulane, which received an at-large bid.

Unfortunately, they also had two home losses to teams with RPIs of 200 or lower, and losing two of three on their home field in the C-USA Tournament didn’t help matters.

“I’m very disappointed. I thought we had done enough work to be one of the 64 teams,” Berry said. “You have to respect the committee’s decision, but I feel we had a very worthy argument.”

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The Biloxi Sun Herald and WJTV-12 contributed to this report.