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Conference USA Basketball soars in postseason play

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Conference USA Basketball dominated the postseason, from FAU’s Final Four run in the NCAA Tournament to multiple other championships.

Every Conference USA basketball team that appeared in a postseason tournament this season won at least one game with the majority making deep postseason runs. Here’s where each team in the league finished.

Florida Atlantic (4-1 in NCAA Tournament, Final Four)

Many thought 9-Seed FAU was underseeded when they were matched up with a red-hot Memphis team in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Owls backed up those beliefs with a win over the Tigers in the first round before defeating Farleigh Dickinson (which upset Purdue) in the Round of 32 to advance to the Sweet 16.

They weren’t finished, though. FAU beat 4-Seed Tennessee and 3-Seed Kansas State in Madison Square Garden to punch their ticket to the Final Four where they lost on a buzzer-beater to San Diego State, despite holding a double-digit lead midway through the second half.

North Texas (5-0 in NIT)

The Mean Green had a fringe case for the NCAA Tournament but had to settle for a No. 2 seed in the NIT where they’ve made plenty of noise. The Mean Green defeated Alcorn, 3-Seed Sam Houston, 1-Seed Oklahoma State (in Stillwater) and 2-Seed Wisconsin to reach the NIT Tournament Championship Game where they played (and beat) fellow Conference USA representative, UAB.

UAB (4-1 in NIT)

To reach the NIT Championship game along with North Texas, UAB has defeated former C-USA foe Southern Miss in the first round and Moorehead State in the second round, before advancing to topple 2-Seed Vanderbilt and Utah Valley. The Blazers were undefeated against teams outsider their conference in the NIT.

Charlotte (4-0, won CBI)

The 49ers were awarded the No. 3 seed in the CBI Tournament and more than backed it up. Charlotte defeated Western Carolina, Milwaukee and Radford along their way to an appearance in the CBI Tournament Championship game against No. 8 seed Eastern Kentucky. They won that game, too.

Rice (1-1 in CBI)

The only Conference USA squad to lose a postseason game thus far, Rice started their brief CBI run with an upset victory over No. 5-Seed Duquesne before falling to No. 4-Seed Southern Utah in the second round. The Owls erased a 14-point deficit to tie the game in the final seconds but couldn’t complete the comeback.

Add ’em Up

Conference USA Basketball finished 18-3 in postseason play and nearly swept all three major postseason tournaments (NCAA, NIT, CBI). They won a staggering 90 percent of their games against non-Conference USA opponents. One more interesting wrinkle: all five of these postseason-bound teams are moving to the American next season.

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Fast start not enough as Rice Baseball falls to Texas A&M for third time

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Rice Baseball started fast, but couldn’t hold on, falling to Texas A&M for the third time on the season in as many games.

Rice baseball couldn’t have asked for much of a better start to their midweek tilt against Texas A&M. Benjamin Rosengard mashed a leadoff home run to put the Owls in front 1-0. Drew Holderbach followed two innings later with a two-run blast, spotting the road team a 3-0 lead entering the bottom half of the inning. The lead would not last.

Texas A&M drove Rice starter Garret Zaskoda from the game in the fourth, connecting on four consecutive extra-base hits to tie the game in the process. A pickoff attempt gone awry by Cristian Cienfuegos in the following frame would allow the Aggies to go ahead, an advantage they’d lengthen as the game progressed.

Last Time Out: Rice Baseball grinds out hard-fought sweep over UAB

Texas A&M added an insurance run in the sixth and two more in the eighth, all via the long ball. Trailing by four in the ninth, Rice snapped out of their offensive funk. Ben Royo hit the game’s fifth home run, getting Rice within two. Then Guy Garibay, with a runner on, deposited a ball over the right-center fence to tie the game.

Rice went to Justin Long in the ninth, proof of their desire to find a way to win. A walk followed by two softly hit balls in the infield loaded the bases, setting up the Aggies for a walk-off win which would come via a hit by pitch. For the third time this season, Rice fell to Texas A&M.

What it means | Cienfuegos joins the circle of trust

At this point, it seems unrealistic to expect Rice baseball to solidify a singular midweek starter for the season. It’s fairly obvious that head coach Jose Cruz Jr. and pitching coach Parker Bangs are willing to mix and match as they work to narrow down their pecking order on the mound. This time around, it was Cristian Cienfuegos that turned heads.

More: Rice Baseball Nonconference State of the Program

Cienfuegos stranded the would-be go-ahead runner on third base on his way to 2.2 strong innings with three strikeouts. He did allow one run (unearned) on a sequence that felt like a halfhearted throw to second that was blocked by the base runner. This was his third consecutive quality outing in a row and it probably should earn him a relief opportunity this coming weekend.

ON DECK | vs UTSA (Fri-Sun)

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Rice Women’s Basketball’s WNIT run blocked by stingy Oregon defense

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Rice women’s basketball fought hard, but couldn’t overcome the size and physicality of Oregon, falling to the Ducks in the second round of the WNIT.

Oregon landed the first blow in their second round WNIT matchup with Rice women’s basketball, knocking down a trio of three-pointers in the first three minutes of action to take an 11-3 home lead. Trailing in a hostile road environment, Rice remained poised and battled back, chipping away at the deficit to take their first lead of the night on their first shot of the second quarter.

From that point on, the back-and-forth commenced. The lead changed six times in the second quarter as the stingy Rice defense forced several turnovers, balancing out an uneven shooting performance that produced just a 33 percent clip from the field in the first half.

Oregon’s length and physicality continued to pose problems for Rice as the game progressed. The Ducks took advantage of a lightly-whistled game and worked the Owls from the inside out. As the Rice shots kept missing, Oregon exploded on a 23-9 run in the third quarter. The fourth quarter was all Oregon, too, overwhelming Rice with smothering defense until the Owls ran out of gas.

Rice shot 27.4 percent from the field, by far their worst shooting performance of the season. The previous low came on Jan. 11 against Middle Tennessee, 32.7 percent. Oregon picked up nine blocks and altered many more shots. They kept the Owls out of sync and eventually wore them down, securing the win with breathing room down the stretch.

Final Box | Oregon 78 – Rice 53

Key takeaway | Close

Rice women’s basketball played four Power 5 opponents this season: Texas A&M, TCU, BYU and Oregon. Three of those games were played away from home. Rice went 3-1 in those contests.

Four games do not a season make, but that sample paints a compelling picture of the type of team Rice has become, largely because the two pairs of games took place almost three months apart. Destiny Jackson, Malia Fisher and Trinity Gooden started the games against Texas A&M and TCU. None of those three started against BYU or Oregon.

Injuries have forced head coach Lindsay Edmonds to adjust, that’s true, but she’s also proven herself brave enough to tinker with a good thing in search of something better. Rice has continued to evolve from the team that struggled through a 1-4 start in conference play to the current iteration that’s won six of its last eight in the most important month of the season.

The first three weeks of conference play represented arguably the only subpar stretch of basketball this team played all season. Rice women’s basketball finished 23-9, which is a hair behind the clip of prior teams that made it to the NCAA Tournament or won the NIT. Rice isn’t back to that level yet, but the progression toward that end is clear. So long postseason, Rice women’s basketball will be back.

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Furious comeback falls short as Rice Basketball falls to SUU

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Rice basketball engineered a furious comeback, but couldn’t make the final defensive stop, falling to Southern Utah in the CBI Tournament.

Whether it was exhaustion, poor execution or just bad luck, Rice basketball started its quarterfinal round game against Southern Utah in a nine-point hole. SUU came out shooting extremely efficiently, knocking down 62 percent of their shots from the field in the first half as the Owls struggled immensely to get going.

“We just couldn’t make a shot,” head coach  Scott Pera said in dismay. “We couldn’t make a shot, other than Travis [Evee].”

It was Evee who kept Rice afloat. He scored a team-high 18 points in the first half while his teammates scored 21 combined. Rice went into the break trailing 12, in desperate need of a rally that wouldn’t come for quite a long time.

“I was hoping the run would be at the 17-minute mark or the 14-minute mark or the 9-minute mark,” Pera said.

Instead, that run came in the final minutes of the game. Trailing by 14 points with 6:30 to play, Rice started to chip away. Quincy Olivari hit some free throws then Mekhi Mason made a three to make it a nine-point game. Olivari and Max Fiedler (twice) each converted and-one opportunities, offset by a few SUU free throws to make it a six-point game. Cam Sheffield cut the deficit to three.

Then, with 24 seconds on the clock and the season on the line, Evee delivered the game-tying three. Southern Utah would drain the clock down to its final seconds then connect on the go-ahead jumper. Olivari’s long heave at the buzzer did not go and despite erasing an unthinkable deficit, the Owls’ season still ended in bitter fashion.

Final Box | SUU 81 – Rice 79

Key takeaway | Doomed by defense

A year ago, Rice basketball played in this same CBI Tournament in this same arena on this same court. Pera hasn’t forgotten because the image of last season’s CBI defeat is seared into his brain in much the same way this loss will be. After overcoming a late deficit, that time against Ohio, Rice watched the Bobcats hit the game-winner at the buzzer and end the Owls’ season.

“That’s two years in a row on the same basket,” Pera lamented.

This time around, Rice basketball doesn’t get to the final shot without several crucial defensive stops in the second half. It wasn’t all offense that fueled this comeback. That the bottom line remains the same. In back-to-back seasons Rice basketball has needed one final stop to prolong their season and they haven’t been able to do it.

More: Rice Women’s Basketball defeats BYU to advance in WNIT

In some respects, Pera is right when he credited his opponents and the player in question, Tevian Jones who ended with 30 points including that game-winner. “They made one more play. That kid made a heck of a shot,” Pera said. But the Owls are still going home.

If Rice basketball wants to be a championship-caliber program, they have to get drastically better on defense. They’ve proven time and time again they can find good shooters. They’ve proven they have the mental capacity to climb out of unthinkable holes. But they haven’t consistently been able to get the most important stop when their season depends on it. And now they’re going home.

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Rice Basketball upsets Duquesne to advance in 2023 CBI Tournament

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Rice basketball survived a three-point barrage by Duquesne and defeated the Dukes, moving on to the second round of the CBI Tournament.

A 12-Seed in the 2023 CBI Tournament, Rice basketball certainly didn’t play like an underdog in Daytona Beach on Sunday afternoon. After trading minor leads in the early portions of the first half, Rice combined a furious scoring assault with a stingy defensive stretch to go on an 18-2 run and take a 13-point lead over the Duquesne Dukes.

Duquesne didn’t stay down long, thundering back via a three-point assault. As Rice found success inside (dominating Duqeuense in the paint 46-18), Duquense knocked down 14 threes but did not hit a three for a span of almost 10 minutes of play, hampering their attempts at a comeback.

As has often been the case for Rice basketball this season, Travis Evee and Quincy Olivari led the way. After failing to score any points in the first half, Olivari came alive in the second, scoring a game-high 19 second-half points and propelling Rice to a late lead.

When asked what sparked Olivari’s key second-half resurgence, head coach Scott Pera credited Olivari’s maturity and poise. “I’ve coached him for four years,” he said. “Sometimes you say something to him and get on him and sometimes you say nothing because he knows… and he knew. And he was ready to go in the second half.”

The battle raged on that way until the final minutes when Andrew Akuchie hit a layup and Mekhi Mason followed that score immediately with a steal and two free throws. That put Rice up by 11 with 1:25 to play. Duquesne hit a few more threes from that point but was unable to dig out of the hole as Rice was able to survive and advance to the next round.

“It’s just another barrier we knocked down,” Pera said of the win. “[It’s] another step for the program and I’m just really proud of the guys.”

Final Box | Rice 84 – Duquesne 78

Key takeaway | Making the good times count

Consistency hasn’t been the hallmark of Rice basketball this season, but the Owls have certainly been explosive. In this game, Rice went on runs of 11-0, 7-0, 6-0 and 5-0 (twice), leading by as many as 13 points toward the end of the first half. With those highs, though, came the lows. Rice allowed runs of 10-0 and 8-0, both in the first half.

More: Rice Women’s Basketball defeats BYU to advance in WNIT

Eliminating the lapses on defense isn’t going to happen at this point in the season. In the interim, that means the solution is making those offensive explosions count. When Rice is hot, making that extra shot to turn a 5-0 run into a 7-0 run will help buy them some cushion in the event they need it later in the game and history shows, that time will probably come.

Up Next: CBI Tournament vs 4-Seed Southern Utah (1:00 p.m. CT)

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