A rocky start went downhill for Rice Baseball on Tuesday night as the Owls ceded game one of the Silver Glove Series to Houston.
What began as a tough luck home first inning home run for Rice hurler Jeremiah Arnett compounded in the innings to come. After striking for two in the first, Houston added two more unearned runs in the third. The Cougars chased Arnett from the game in the next frame, adding three more runs against his relief, Ethan Atchley.
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Meanwhile, the Rice bats found little success of their own against Houston starter Caden Cooper, who allowed one hit through five innings to keep the Owls off the scoreboard. Even when Rice forced Cooper from the game in the sixth, a double play killed a potential rally and kept the deficit at 8-0.
Rice got one run back in the top of the eighth inning, but it wouldn’t be enough. Houston’s Justin Cherrington answered with a grand slam in the bottom half, ending the game by run rule.
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In the early weeks of the 2026 season, Rice baseball is still searching for where it belongs in the pecking order on the national stage. So far it’s somewhere between USC (RPI No. 3) and Northwestern (110) / Abilene Christian (198). That’s a rather wide range of which Rice sits right in the middle.
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RPI pegged Houston (90) and Rice (95) as similarly stout clubs, something that did no seem to be the case for much of the contest on Tuesday night. Fortunately for the Owls, they’ll have two more chances to avenge this loss to the Cougars this season, hopefully with star infielder JC Davis back in the lineup to aid an offense which could use his bat.