Rice Women’s Basketball played North Texas tight for 38 minutes before the Owls shooting struggles finally came home to roost.
For 38 minutes, Rice women’s basketball and North Texas were locked in the makings of a class game between these two Texas-based powers. Through 38 minutes, neither team led by more than six points. There were 10 ties and seven lead changes. The back-and-forth was constant and neither team ever felt in control.
Malia Fisher and Emily Klaczek were productive from the field with Sussy Ngulefac coming off the bench with a team-high 13 points as well as four boards. Everything seemed to be going well for the home team until all of a sudden the shots stopped falling at the most inopportune time.
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The Owls missed eight consecutive shots in the final 2:05 before a last-second layup that proved irrelevant to the final result. The run of misses inflated a woeful day from deep in which Rice converted a dismal 3-of-30 attempts from three-point range, further depressing a disappointing 31 percent shooting performance from the field.
Final Box | North Texas 63 – Rice 54
FINAL | North Texas 63, @RiceWBB 54 pic.twitter.com/1llVkP6nLG
— The Roost (@AtTheRoost) March 2, 2024
Key takeaway | Slipping away
There’s never a good time to lose four in a row, but the last weeks of the regular season are a particularly painful time to do so. Two weeks ago the double-bye in the conference tournament looked exceedingly likely. Today, not so much.
Rice is currently tied in the win column with Charlotte, UAB, Memphis and UTSA. They don’t hold the tiebreaker with any of those four, with the Roadrunners still on the schedule in the final game of the regular season. That lack of a tiebreaker is what makes the double-bye seem so out of reach right now.
If Charlotte beats FAU on Sunday or ECU on Tuesday, they’ll be guaranteed the spot ahead of Rice in the standings. The same goes for UAB if they’re able to beat Wichita State on Tuesday.
The Owls’ only chance right now would require Charlotte to lose both games, UAB to lose to Wichita State, Memphis to lose to North Texas AND Rice to beat UTSA. If that exact scenario happened, Rice would finish 10-8, a game ahead of that entire grouping.
Up Next: at UTSA (Tuesday, Mar. 5)
