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Rice Baseball 2022: Midseason State of the Program

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Rice Baseball is more than a month into the 2022 season. Here’s where the program stands and what’s next for the Owls on the diamond this spring.

With one week of conference play already in the books and roughly 40 percent of the season complete, we’re finally starting to discover just what kind of team Rice baseball is becoming. The Owls own a 6-16 record but have won three of their last six and have played much better baseball as of late.

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Rice baseball head coach Jose Cruz Jr. says the team is “still creating a bit of a culture of what’s expected,” but remains encouraged by the progress he’s seen so far. In this midseason State of the Program, we’ll look at the highs, lows and everything in-between as we attempt to explain where Rice baseball is right now — and more importantly — where it might be going.

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Texas A&M outlasts Rice Baseball in marathon midweek game

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Rice baseball and Texas A&M played a marathon midweek game into the late hours of Tuesday night which went the way of the Aggies when it finally wound down.

It was clear from the start this wasn’t going to be a quick midweek reunion for two Lone Star state rivals. The last time Rice baseball and Texas A&M had met at Reckling Park had been their final game of the 2020 season before COVID-19 shut the sports world down later that week. Both teams made up for the long break with a four-hour, 27-minute ballgame, the longest of the season for the Owls.

Rice opened the scoring in the bottom of the first, courtesy of a wild pitch that allowed Austin Bulman to score from third, but not until seven Owls had come to the plate and Texas A&M had made a pitching change. Texas A&M would answer in the next frame, scoring four and forcing Rice to make a pitching change of their own.

The first two innings alone lasted more than an hour. Things wouldn’t speed up too much after that. Both squads would combine for four home runs, 23 total runs, 25 hits and 13 walks, providing plenty of traffic on the basepaths and very few short innings. 15 combined pitchers appeared in the nine-inning game.

For about half an hour, it felt like Texas A&M had broken things open with a fourth-inning grand slam that gave the visitors an 8-2 lead at the time. Despite the deficit, Rice baseball resolved to keep chipping away

Last Time Out : Takeaways from 2-1 Series Loss to UAB

The Owls scratched across a pair across to start the bottom half of the fourth inning. Then Nathan Becker delivered a bases-clearing double to get Rice within one. Benjamin Rosengard drove in the equalizer on the next at bat. Two and a half hours after they’d started, it was a brand new ball game.

Texas A&M would gain further margin down the stretch, tacking on six more runs over the course of the next two hours of action. Rice threatened on several occasions but was unable to produce a second six-run rally, falling at home by the final score of 15-8.

What it means | Rice can hang

Rice baseball doesn’t have the luxury of throwing out the first month of the regular season, but it’s abundantly clear they aren’t letting the rocky start linger. The Owls did enough over the course of the past week to prove they’ve got what it takes to turn things around start winning some baseball games. During Tuesday’s marathon, they proved they belonged.

Texas A&M came to Houston fresh off a weekend series win over No. 8 LSU. The Aggies aren’t a perfect team by any means and midweek bullpen games can get squirrely — this one did — but after Rice erased a six-run deficit and hung around with a variety of bullpen arms, it sure felt like the Owls were every bit the equal of the team visiting from College Station.

Rice spotted Texas A&M four runs after loading in the fourth, allowing the Aggies to load the bases without a hit, then ceding a grand slam. They dropped multiple balls in the outfield, although only one counted as an error. Even still, it wasn’t until Texas A&M put up a three-spot in the eighth to extend their lead to 14-8 that things truly felt somewhat secure.

For the better part of four hours, Rice baseball hung around. And if Rice can hang with Texas A&M, they can hang with Marshall, FAU and everyone else on their schedule.

ON DECK | Marshall

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Rice Football 2022 Spring Practice Notebook 2: Depth Chart

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The first Rice football depth chart of the spring has been released featuring several shakeups across the board at a variety of positions.

So the saying goes, a depth chart is worth the price of the paper it’s printed on. If that’s how we feel about these prescribed lineups in the regular season, we ought to put much less stock in their scribbles in the spring. It’s with that important caveat I share the first Rice football depth chart of the spring.

More: Rice Football Spring Notebook 1 – Introductions

There are a few things we can glean from these tiered position groupings, starting with who isn’t listed on the roster and venturing to the host of new faces that are cracking a Rice two-deep for the first time in their careers. And that’s before reinforcements show up in the form of graduate transfers this summer. With that in mind, here are five important takeaways from the Rice football spring depth chart.

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Rice Basketball: Sizing up Owls vs Ohio in CBI

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14-Seed Rice basketball takes on 3-Seed Ohio in the first round of the CBI Tournament on Saturday. Here’s everything you need to know.

How to follow

When: Sat. March 19 at 6:30 p.m.
Streaming: FloHoops ($)
Radio: RiceOwls.com
Stats: RiceOwls.com

Sizing up the Rice Owls

Rice basketball is playing in the postseason for the first time under head coach Scott Pera. The program has won at least one conference tournament game in each of the past two seasons and now gets its chance at a postseason berth.

More: Rice basketball accepts bid to CBI Tournament

The Owls have the edge on the offensive efficiency side, shooting 45.9 percent from the floor this season and 37.3 percent from three compared to the Bobcat’s 43.1 percent clip from the floor 34.0 percent from three. Rice has 500 assists on the season compared to Ohio’s 422,

Sizing up the Ohio Bobcats

Ohio reached the semifinals of the MAC Tournament where they fell to Kent State. A season ago, Ohio was a 13-seed in the NCAA Tournament where they upset 4-seed Virginia in the first round. They are led by guard Mark Sears, who is second in the MAC with 19.5 points per game.

The Bobcats protect the basketball well, averaging just 10.5 turnovers per game to the Owls’ 12.5 turnovers. They enter the game with a 24-9 record but picked up five of those losses in their last seven outings.

How Rice got here

By the time Rice basketball reached conference play and returned to full strength following a string of COVID cases that plagued the roster, it was early January. The team was 7-5 following a crushing defeat against North Texas. Then they started winning. More than that — they started looking the part.

Rice beat the eventual Conference USA Tournament champion and NCAA Tournament-bound UAB in a stretch of games in which they went 5-3. Then, in Pera’s own words “Quincy [Olivari] goes down and the whole season changes.” Rice would drop a close game to UTEP following Olivari’s wrist injury that ended his season. Then the Owls would lose six of their final seven regular-season conference games.

Why it matters

It’s been more than a month since Olivari’s injury. When Rice tips off against Ohio, Pera and his staff will have had 10 games to tinker and craft a gameplan that utilized the strengths that still remain. A win would be the first for the program since they won an opening-round game in the CBI in 2017.

A week ago Pera said this team would be “excited as heck” to get a chance to play postseason basketball. After all this team has been through, moving on in the postseason would speak volumes.

Rice has already reached 16 wins, the best of any season of Pera’s tenure, but the success feels somewhat muted because of just how successful many — Pera included — thought this team could have become. There have been a lot of bad breaks along the way. Players are hurt and the roster is thin. But the ball is officially in their court.

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Hot hitting continues as Rice Baseball blasts SHSU

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Rice baseball has its first winning streak of the season, taking down SHSU at Reckling Park the night following a blowout win over SFA.

Following a 19-run outburst on Tuesday night against SFA, the Rice baseball bats were quick to prove it wasn’t a one-night show. The Owls were kept off the scoreboard in the first inning against Sam Houston on Wednesday before the offense started to heat up in the second frame.

Both Rice and Sam Houston would scratch across single runs in the second before Rice took a decent lead with a three-run fourth highlighted by an RBI triple from Nathan Becker. Sam Houston would sneak back one run in the fourth and another in the fifth, but Rice starter Thomas Burbank was largely able to work around opposing base runners. He finished with 4.2 innings pitched, three runs (two earned) on nine hits and three strikeouts.

Last Time Out : Pair of slams propel Rice baseball over SFA

Burbank would be relieved by Tom Vincent who got Rice out of the fifth with the lead, then the bats went back to work. The offense exploded for five runs, turning a close 4-3 game into a one-sided 9-3 affair. Sam Houston would get two back in the seventh against Alex DeLeon but Rice regained the six-run lead in the bottom of the eighth courtesy of two out RBI singles from Johnny Hole and Pierce Gallo.

DeLeon would bounce back with two strikeouts in the eighth, ceding to closer Matthew Linskey in the ninth. Linskey slammed the door, striking out the side and clinching the 13-5 victory. It marks the first time this season Rice baseball has won back-to-back games.

What it means | Back-to-back-to-back-to-back

Turning baserunners into run has been one of the biggest challenges Rice baseball has faced this season. The Owls have finished close enough in the hit column in many of their games, but a combination of messy fielding and minimal clutch hits have turned those games into uncompetitive contests.

One need to look no further than their 10-1 defeat to Texas Tech in which the Red Raiders collected nine hits to the Owls eight or even their 15-1 loss to Texas in which Texas had 10 hits and Rice had six. Four hits shouldn’t be the difference in 14 runs, but it was more often than not early on in the season. That’s what makes this shift seem so dramatic.

In the fifth inning against SHSU, four consecutive Rice batters collected an RBI. The final two batters did so with two outs, including an RBI double from Dustin Woodcox and an RBI single from Guy Garibay. Rice seemingly couldn’t get hits with runners in scoring position for weeks. On Wednesday they collected them in droves and had 10+ hits in back-to-back games for the first time this year.

It’s not all going to change overnight, but we’ve now got a few games in a row as evidence this team can get those big hits. Next, they’ll focus on doing so consistently.

ON DECK | UAB

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