Another wire-to-wire game in the American Conference Tournament broke the wrong way late for Rice Baseball, who saw its season come to an end in a 9-6 loss to UAB.
A rocky start for Ryland Urbanczyk put Rice baseball in early trouble in their bid to stave off elimination in Clearwater on Friday. In need of length from one of their top arms after a loss to East Carolina that morning, Urbanczyk was at 53 pitches through two innings and left the game after five innings with the Owls in a 3-1 hole.
A solo shot from Kutter-Gage Webb was the only sign of life from the designated home team to that point, who fell further behind 4-1 on a suicide squeeze executed against Ethan Atchley, Urbanczyk’s sixth inning relief.
Atchley got out of that frame but needed help an inning later, eliminating a leadoff triple yet still walking in a run with the bases loaded later in that same inning. Brayden Sharp extinguished the threat to close the seventh, but not before the Owls trailed 5-1, the largest deficit they’d faced at the tournament to that point.
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Nevertheless, the Owls kept fighting. A pinch hit single from Masa Chilcutt put a runner aboard for Hiram Bocachica who drilled a wall scraping home run to make it 5-3. Then a pinch hit single from Landon West and a walk from Zachary Daigre set up a pinch-hit RBI single from Michael Zito.
Another scoreless inning from Sharp brought the heart of the order to the plate in the eighth. With Rice trailing by one, Paul Smith collected his first hit of the tournament, blasting a game-tying home run past the scoreboard in right. Before the bench had finished its celebrations, Garet Boehm followed with a longball of his own, putting Rice in front for the first time in the game.
The lead would not last long. Ty Thames, who had thrown two scoreless innings earlier in the day against East Carolina, managed just one out as the Blazers teed off against the Owls’ reliever, scoring four times to chase him from the game.
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There would be no rallying, this time around. Having exhausted their magic over the course of the previous two games, Rice went quietly in their final inning of the season, falling by a final score of 9-6. Rice baseball ends the season 35-24, more than doubling their win total from 2025.
“That’s as good as a transformation as you can have,” head coach David Pierce said, reflecting on the season as a whole. “What they accomplished in a short amount of time is something huge to build on, and they will. they’re hungry now, kind of having some understanding of what it takes and a little bit of experience now is going to take us a long ways.”
While the season didn’t end in defeat — something Pierce did make sure to note was a commonality shared by all teams that don’t win the national title — the step forward for the program was undeniable.
“I just told our assistant coaches, I truly believe this is one of my most enjoyable seasons ever,” Pierce said. “I would not trade this one for anything. It was so memorable and those kids mean so much to me and our staff because they did want to be a part of changing the culture. And I think they did an outstanding job.