It only took seven inning for Rice baseball to overwhelm HBU, sweeping the season series with a 7-inning victory over the Huskies on Tuesday night.
Simply put, Tuesday night was one of the most excellent performances Rice baseball has put forth on the diamond in quite some time. From start to finish, the Owls routed their crosstown rivals, sending HBU home after seven innings, a joint decision by the coaches given the decidedly one-sided state of the game.
The score became slanted as it was by an 11-run, 8-hit fifth inning in which Rice came one batter away from going through the order twice. Guy Garibay, Austin Bulman, Aaron Smigelski, Pierce Gallo and Antonio Cruz all reached base twice in the inning as the Owls tallied two triples in the frame.
Last Time Out : Rice baseball wrestling with sweep at hands of FAU
Rice was aided by an HBU error midway through the inning, but they did more than their fair share of damage without any help from the visiting Huskies.
As exciting as the big inning was, it would turn out to be window dressing on the final box score because of the superb pitching performance by Thomas Burbank. The San Jacinto transfer picked up his first win of the season, throwing five innings of one-hit ball, striking out five and silencing the HBU bats.
Burbank would have still picked up the win even if Rice had been shut out from the second inning onward. Smigelski broke the seal on the scoring with a two-run double in the opening inning. From then on it was smooth sailing for the Owls on the mound and at the plate.
“It was nice. It was something positive. We haven’t had something positive in a bit,” Rice baseball head coach Cruz Jr. said after the game. “Now its build on this, come back tomorrow, practice, tighten it up and get ready to go to Louisiana.”
What it means | Midweek magic
Outside of a sloppy 4-error, 9-run loss against Baylor in early March, midweek games have been favorable to the Owls so far this season. Rice is 4-4 in games played on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the majority of those losses have been competitive ballgames, including last week’s slugfest against Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Meanwhile, Rice baseball is 5-17 in all other contests. That might mean the Owls are better equipped for the churn and chaos that comes with midweek games and stretched bullpen or it may just be a nod to the offense which has teed off against pitching and made opposing hurlers pay for their mistakes in recent weeks. Whatever the case, Rice will take the good fortune whenever it comes around.
ON DECK | at Louisiana Tech
