Well, turns out I didn't have anything backwards or anything crazy like that. I got on the horn with CM today and discovered I have the wrong clutch on my hands. It's for a 95 Eclipse with a non-modular setup, which uses a different pressure plate all together - which is why it was not assembling correctly. I bought it off PowerEclipses about a year ago, knowing I wanted to go with better clutch once I had more power, without really doing a whole lot of research about it. My goof. So now it's for sale in the FS forum:

http://forums.2gnt.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=16&topic_id=43189&mesg_id=43189&page=

I thought about keeping it and getting a 94/95 Neon flywheel and going with a non-modular setup, but I don't want the difficultly of dropping the tranny that comes with it. Thanks for your help anyway guys. At least I can sleep tonight knowing it wasn't me doing something wrong.

Lesson: Live and learn - sometimes the hard way.