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Rice Football Recruiting: DL Matthew Aribisala commits to Owls

May 16, 2025 By Matthew Bartlett

The 2025 Rice Football recruiting class continues beefing up its haul in the defensive trenches. Defensive lineman Matthew Aribisala has committed to the Owls.

The finishing touches to the 2025 Rice Football recruiting class are being made as the calendar bleeds into mid-May and players will soon be on campus for summer workouts. Before that happens, the Owls are adding a few more reinforcements via the transfer portal, including this latest new face from just north of town. Former Sam Houston defensive lineman Matthew Aribisala has committed to the Owls.

Aribisala arrives on South Main with two years of eligibility remaining following four years spent at Sam Houston State. He saw action in 21 games, making his largest impact in 2023 when he recorded 11 tackles across 12 games.

He picked up his first sack last season against Rice and was on his way to an even larger role in the defense before an injury sidelined him for the remainder of the year, limiting him to just four games last fall.

Upon entering the portal, Aribisala received interest from several Group of 5 programs with offers from Ohio, New Mexico State and Arkansas State, among others.

The addition of Aribisala gives the Owls a robust group of defensive additions from the Transfer Portal this spring. He joins fellow defensive line additions VJ Bronson (North Texas) and Sam Carrell (Texas Tech) as well as safety Jack Kane (Oregon State) and corner Khary Crump (Houston Christian).

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The 6-foot-3, 295 pound interior defender has the potential to make a sizable impact on the Owls’ front. There’s not a ton of highlights out there, but this sack of Rice QB EJ Warner in the season opener last year showcased the kind of speed and power he brings to the table as a pass rusher.

Missing the game😮‍💨 pic.twitter.com/7SVGnTt8Yu

— Matthew Aribisala🇳🇬 (@Aribisala_) April 27, 2025
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Filed Under: Archive, Football, Football Recruiting Tagged With: Matthew Aribisala, Rice Football, Rice Football recruiting

Rice Baseball 2025: MLB Owls Update – May 14

May 14, 2025 By Matthew Bartlett

The 2025 MLB season is underway and Rice baseball alums are making the most of their time in The Show. Here’s the latest from the MLB Owls.

Dane Myers – Miami Marlins

Myers’s electric start to the season was slowed, at least briefly, by an oblique injury that landed him on the 10-day injured list on Monday. In his final appearance before his forced time off, Myers went 1-for-3 against the White Sox with a run scored and a stolen base, his seventh of the season thus far, and potentially the play which caused the injury.

#Marlins Dane Myers injured on the slide into second base.

Expected to get imaging done on the injury.

A lot of irrelevant options for replacement here, unfortunately pic.twitter.com/BeArqK172K

— Mike Kurland (@Mike_Kurland) May 12, 2025

Through May 14, Myers is hitting .337 with six extra-base hits, five walks and 21 strikeouts. His OPS is .857 and he’s collected 14 RBI.

Injured List

Anthony Rendon – Los Angeles Angels

Rendon is slated to miss a significant amount of time following him surgery this spring. The bad news is another bump in an injury-plagued stint with the Angels; Rendon missed a chunk of last season with an oblique strain.

Matt Canterino – Twins AAA

Canterino was thought to have a real chance to crack the big league roster at some point this season, converting himself to a reliver this offseason in hopes of limiting the stress on his arm and preserving his health. Unfortunately, he’s set to miss a third consecutive season, undergoing shoulder surgery in early March. The Twins since released him and signed him to a minor league contract while he rehabs.

Knocking on the Door

The following Owls began the season in AAA:

  • Tristan Gray – Charlotte Knights (White Sox)
  • Evan Kravetz – Louisville Bats (Reds)
  • Glenn Otto – Sugar Land Space Cowboys (Astros)
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Filed Under: Archive, Baseball Tagged With: MLB Owls, Rice baseball

Rice Football Recruiting: RB Carson Morgan commits to Owls

May 13, 2025 By Matthew Bartlett

The 2025 Rice Football recruiting class has picked up another boost in their skill position ranks. Former Kansas running back Carson Morgan has committed to the Owls.

Bolstering the running back room was one of the most evident objectives when it came to rounding out the 2025 Rice Football recruiting class and prepping the roster before summer workouts arrived. Rice was able to find that piece in the transfer portal. Former Kansas running back Carson Morgan has committed to the Owls.

A product of Bentonville West High School in Arkansas who grew up in Austin, TX, Morgan committed to Kansas as a member of the 2023 class. He appeared in six games for the Jayhawks last season, primarily on special teams, without recording any official statistics, before entering the portal this spring. He has three years of eligibility remaining.

Morgan picked up a handful of FCS offers before both Rice and Ohio made their offers on the same day. Less than two weeks later, Morgan opted to head south to Houston, TX, rather than north to Athens, OH. His prior relationship with Rice football head coach Scott Abell played role in the decision.

“Coach Abell and that entire staff recruited me pretty heavily out of high school when they were at Davidson,” Morgan told The Roost. “When they reached out after I entered the portal they were very enthusiastic about me and wanted me to come visit as soon as possible.”

Morgan rounds out a skill position group that has added a fair amount of veterans in the portal over the last several weeks. Before his announcement, Rice had added Louisiana-Monroe wide receiver Artis Cole, Coastal Carolina slot receiver Max Balthazar and Kennesaw State quarterback Lucas Scheerhorn.

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The film for Morgan is a compilation of practice highlights and some special teams work. Limited though it is, Morgan’s 6-foot, 210-pound frame is the fills a gap the position was lacking and he showcases a relatively quick transition in traffic that could pay off in big ways in the Rice offense.

“I’m gonna give this program everything I got and show this community that y’all got a special one,” Morgan said. “Can’t wait to get back down in the great state of Texas!”

I have officially entered the transfer portal with 3 years of eligibility.

Running Back
6'0" 210lbs

High School Film: https://t.co/SiHFr4KnXO

Contact Information:
(512) 771 – 0207
[email protected] pic.twitter.com/G3eQsdixR9

— Carson Morgan (@CarsonMorgan17) April 19, 2025
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Filed Under: Archive, Football, Football Recruiting Tagged With: Carson Morgan, Rice Football, Rice Football recruiting

Rice Baseball 2025: International Owls Update – May 10

May 12, 2025 By Matthew Bartlett

In addition to the Rice baseball alums in the Major Leagues, Owls are playing professional baseball around the world. Here’s the latest from Mexico and Japan.

Jon Duplantier – Hanshin Tigers (Japan)

Duplantier signed a minor league contract with the Brewers this winter, but was granted his release soon after so that he could pursue an opportunity in Japan. The bet to go oversees has worked out extremely well for Duplantier thus far. In four appearances with the Hanshin Tigers, Duplantier is 1-1 with a sterling 1.23 ERA. He’s struck out 28 batters and allowed just 15 hits in 22 innings of work.

In (Nippon Professional Baseball) NPB, pitchers are required to hit, something Duplantier rarely did in the states. He has two official big league plate appearances without a hit. In Japan, however, Duplantier is 1-for-6, collecting his very first pro-baseball knock.

ジョン・デュプランティエ Filthy 137キロカーブ😨 

ほぼほぼスライダーの球速だがリリースはカーブ
しっかりトップスピンのかかった強い下り変化で
バットを躱す

NPB初登板は6回8奪三振1失点の好投 pic.twitter.com/sDeyOePcH8

— tanaka13ver2025 (@tanaka13ver2021) April 3, 2025

Through May 12, Duplantier has a 1.23  ERA with a 0.863 WHIP. He’s averaging 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings.

Tyler Duffey– Generales de Durango (Mexico)

A free agent, Duffey opted to play in Mexico following 10 seasons in the major leagues, most recently splitting his 2024 season in between AAA and the Kansas City Royals. He signed with Generales de Durango this offseason.

Duffey has made 11 appearances with the club so far, all in relief. He’s struck out 12 while handing out just seven free passes and while he has yet to allow a home run, several of the men he’s allowed to reach base have come around to score.

8️⃣🔻 TYLER DUFFEY CUELGA EL CERO PROPINANDO CHOCOLATITO CALIENTE Y ESPUMOSO 🍫🔥🔥#𝐃𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐨𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐚́𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐀𝐫𝐝𝐞🔥
#CienAñosSiendoElRey👑 pic.twitter.com/kZXQaPCBN4

— Caliente de Durango (@calienteddgo) April 30, 2025

Through May 12, Duffey has a 5.06 ERA with a 1.594 WHIP. He’s averaging 10.1 strikeouts per nine innings.

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The Winding Road: Jack Ben-Shoshan’s circuitous path to the top of the Rice Baseball bullpen

May 11, 2025 By Matthew Bartlett

Rice Baseball, Jack Ben-Shoshan
March 29, 2025, Houston, Texas, US: Jack Ben-Shoshan delivers a pitch during game two between the East Carolina University Pirates and the Rice Owls at Reckling Park. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker | Rice Athletics

A position player turned ace reliever only begins to tell the story of the winding road that made Jack Ben-Shoshan a crucial member of the Rice baseball bullpen.

A member of Jose Cruz Jr’s 2021 Rice baseball recruiting class, Jack Ben-Shoshan was viewed as an all-purpose addition to the Owls’ program when he signed. Listed by the Perfect Game recruiting service as a shortstop, second baseman, third baseman and right handed pitcher, there was little doubt the program could find a way to use him. The only question was where.

Ben-Shoshan came to Rice primarily as a position player, riding the momentum of a standout high school career at St. John’s in Houston. There, he posted a .357 career batting average and a .995 OPS, leading his team to the district championship game as a senior. But the transition to college ball didn’t come easy.

He made a strong first impression, doubling in his first collegiate at-bat, a pinch-hit appearance against Texas in Austin. Still, the rest of his freshman season proved more challenging. He finished the year hitting just .115 over 30 appearances, all as a position player.

Health was part of the reason Ben-Shoshan’s contributions to the program had been limited to the batter’s box and the field at that point. His relatively unrefined pitching history was the other. While many players have pitching coaches and do extra work in high school, Ben-Shoshan did not. Everything he knew on the mound came from personal experience.

“I always pitched, but I would call myself more of an infielder who threw,” Ben-Shoshan summarized. “I didn’t really know how to pitch.”

In his eyes, he was a ball of clay, willing to be molded. And when the decision came to pursue pitching full-time, he dove into the study headfirst, trusting pitching coach Parker Bangs’ instruction as if it were gospel. Without previous instruction to weigh against the new information, Ben-Shoshan became a sponge, eager to absorb everything he could.

“I always pitched, but I would call myself more of an infielder who threw… I didn’t really know how to pitch.”- Jack Ben-Shoshan

Ben-Shoshan took to his new responsibilities well enough, showing encouraging signs throughout the fall, but the newly-made pitcher wouldn’t see game action until the following March, beginning the season as one of several pieces in the bullpen working to carve out a role for himself.

From there, the successful outings began to cascade and Ben-Shoshan began to take on a more instrumental role in the program’s pitching plans. The closer role was spoken for — Matthew Linskey was in no danger of losing his job to anyone when it came to that spot — but Ben-Shoshan was just fine settling into a setup position and turned himself into one of the most trusted leverage relivers on the roster.

The first-year pitcher led the team with a 3.20 ERA, outdoing both Linskey and staff ace Parker Smith, who would go on to be MLB Draft selections following the conclusion of the season. Not draft eligible yet, Ben-Shoshan hoped to join them in a year’s time but life had other plans.

A Pitching Wilderness

All the momentum and goodwill Ben-Shoshan had accumulated during his sophomore season came to a screeching halt when his junior season began.

In the season opener, Ben-Shoshan ceded the game-winning run in his first appearance against Notre Dame. He entered another game against the Irish two days later only to give up a first-pitch home run and back-to-back four-pitch walks before being pulled.

Ben-Shoshan failed to complete a full inning of work in four of his next five appearances, spiraling further and further from his aspirations and seeing his season-long ERA climb to 13.50 before the coaching staff had seemingly seen enough.

More: “He’s A Bulldog” — Parker Smith’s Journey to Rice Baseball Ace

Following a four-run, no-out misadventure against Tulane on March 22, Ben-Shoshan made just four further appearances in the final two months of the season. Davion Hickson ascended to closer status while Ben-Shoshan was remitted to the bench, an arm reserved for blowouts and eating innings in games decided long before he was summoned to the mound.

A season that began with such promise had ended in disaster.

Ben-Shoshan, whose Rice baseball career had been anything but linear to that point, resolved not to let that bad year define him. He spent the summer working at the Driveline facility in Washington, an organization that prides itself on utilizing technology and analytics to improve performance. His goal was to get his mechanics back to where he’d been the previous season.

“I told myself I’m not going to let a year like that happen again. It’s a personal thing that I took,” he said. “I had a good fall last year and then it kind of fell apart during the season. I pretty much did whatever I could to not let that happen again.”

From his perspective, he’d been pressing too much. That search for added velocity had negatively impacted his command. When that went sideways, his confidence and composure on the mound followed suit. Given an offseason to reset, he returned to South Main ready to contribute.

At that point, though, he was an older arm that looked to have lost a step the season prior amidst a bullpen with more promising young pieces. The coaching staff collectively told him they envisioned him as a reserve reliever who might throw 20 or 30 innings in the season. In their eyes, the days of Ben-Shoshan being a high-leverage option were long gone.

The Road Back

Sure enough, Ben-Shoshan made four appearances in the first month of the season including a no-out, five-run debacle against a ranked Mississippi State squad. But when head coach Jose Cruz Jr. was fired in mid-March, Ben-Shoshan saw an opportunity for one final chance to make his case under the leadership of newly installed head man David Pierce.

Ben-Shoshan remembers it being right around that point in the year when he’d truly begun to settle into his routine. His velocity was where he wanted it to be and his command had returned, too. Most importantly, he was as mentally locked in as he could recall being in a long time. For him, the coaching change came at just the right time.

“[Pierce] came in and harped on working the strike zone, getting ahead early,” Ben-Shoshan recalled. “I think that’s something that I’m really good at. He really liked that part of me, filling up the zone.”

Rice Baseball, Jack Ben-Shoshan
March 29, 2025, Houston, Texas, US: Jack Ben-Shoshan delivers a pitch during game two between the East Carolina University Pirates and the Rice Owls at Reckling Park. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker | Rice Athletics

Flush with newfound confidence, Ben-Shoshan did just that. He did not allow an earned run in his first four outings under Pierce, including a marvelous nine-strikeout, 3.2-inning relief outing against Sam Houston. All of a sudden, Ben-Shoshan was back in his groove.

Since Pierce was hired, Ben-Shoshan owns a 2.41 ERA and his season-long ERA of 3.51 is the best on the team, narrowly edging out staff ace Davion Hickson’s 3.70 mark. Among Rice pitchers who have appeared in at least five games, none boast a lower WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched) than he does. Put simply, he’s been the most reliable arm on the roster for the better part of two months.

It’s not as if Pierce entered with hopes of authoring Ben-Shoshan’s comeback story. He was hired to win baseball games, something that, in his estimation, requires a certain kind of fearlessness that Ben-Shoshan has developed through the trials along his path.

Pierce praised Ben-Shoshan as having a “bulldog mentality. Where he’s like, here’s my stuff, I’m coming at you. If you hit it, I’m going to do it again.”

“He’s not afraid of an at bat,” Pierce continued. “That’s the key, trusting his stuff. He knows he’s going to get popped a little bit, but he never backs down. And that’s impressive to me. That’s what I want from our pitchers. If you don’t believe in your stuff in the zone, then why should we believe in it? And he believes in his stuff.”

Given how unceremoniously his 2024 season ended and this campaign began, Ben-Shoshan’s reemergence represents perhaps the most stark turnaround of any singular player on the roster.

When asked to reflect on his bounce-back year, Ben-Shoshan couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“I’m not surprised,” he said.

“Starting at that Yale game, my confidence just kept going and going and I realized I was in a really good spot, to just keep working through that with that mentality and those mechanics and I didn’t need to change anything mentally of physically.”

The Journey Ahead

Ben-Shoshan credits his pitching success in large part to pitching coach Parker Bangs who has been with the program all three seasons Ben-Shoshan has been pitching for the Owls. It was Bangs who was briefly named the interim coach for the week between Cruz and Pierce trading places and Bangs who gave Ben-Shoshan the opportunity against Yale he credits as the beginning of his turnaround.

“We click,” Ben-Shoshan said of Bangs. “He understands how to coach me and how to motivate me, what kind of feedback I work well with. I would credit a significant portion of my pitching to him. I think he’s been unbelievable in helping me.”

The coordination between Pierce — who comes to Rice with an extensive history as a pitching coach — and Bangs has allowed Ben-Shoshan to thrive.

“When I’m on the mound, I know I’ve got two coaches who have my back and are going to help me if I need anything. I think it’s just a confidence boost when I’m up there,” Ben-Shoshan said. “I can trust myself. I can trust the guys behind me. I can trust the coaches. That’s been a big, big change that I really enjoy.”

To that extent, Ben-Shoshan’s emergence is a testament to the level to which mindset and confidence are essential to pitch at a high level. There was no ah-ha moment, new pitch or refined windup that restored the Owls’ 6-foot right-hander to prominence. No, it was his mind that needed to be readjusted. That, and plenty of hard work to turn those dreams into tangible results.

“I think it’s a mental thing,” Ben-Shoshan said. “I spent the whole summer trying to get my mechanics back to what they were and once I got comfortable with them, kind of just not changing them and trying to do more.”

More: 59 Minutes — David Pierce Challenges Rice baseball to grow

Back in his sweet spot, Ben-Shoshan is doing all he can to take it one pitch a time. He admits he at least briefly entertained the notion of going pro and thoughts of the MLB Draft and potential opportunities he might have after the season, but at the end of the day, focusing on the present is the best thing he can do to bolster his chances of future success.

“I’m hesitant to think about what comes after this because part of me thought about that last fall, and I think it hurt me,” Ben-Shoshan said. “For most of this season it’s just been living in the moment, trying to keep stringing good outings together and then, you know, if it happens, it happens.”

“If I can keep playing, I would love to, but at the same time I don’t want to get bogged down on that and affect how I pitch.”

And so he’ll continue to take the baseball whenever he’s asked, soaking in his situation and reflecting on the winding road he took to get here. The future, he hopes, will sort itself. For now, Jack Ben-Shoshan is living in the present and doing all he can to get one more out for his team, one at bat at a time.

**Photo credit: Maria Lysaker**
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