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Rice Football 2022 Spring Game Notebook: 10 Takeaways

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The offense won the Rice Football Spring Game, putting an exciting cap on a productive spring. Here are 10 takeaways from the spring finale.

According to the official tally, Blue (the offense) defeated Gray (the defense), 30-12 in the 2022 Rice Football Spring Game. The offense started out slow before scoring on four of its last six drives and finishing with all three offensive touchdowns after the halftime break.

In roughly 2,000 words, here are 10 takeaways from the game itself, several of the themes overlapping with trends that have manifested themselves over the course of the spring.

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Rice Football 2022 Spring Practice Notebook 6: Running backs ramping up

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The running back room has made significant strides for Rice football this spring, thanks in part to the addition of new position coach CJ Anderson.

Many of the bigs plays of the spring have come from the running back room. Rice football brought in former Super Bowl Champion CJ Anderson to lead the room during the offseason and his presence is already being felt. This update details what he’s telling his guys and the growth (and challenges) he’s seen with the unit throughout the spring.

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Rice Football 2022 Spring Practice Notebook 3: Scrimmage 1

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The first scrimmage of 2022 Rice Football spring practice is complete. Here are a few individual standouts and some big picture takeaways.

Defense won the day on the first scrimmage of the spring. The back-and-forth battle of the two sides of the ball was weighted heavily toward that side of the ball for the entirety of the season as Rice football donned pads to engage in one of their most highly anticipated sessions of the spring. This update breaks down some individual standouts on both sides of the ball and their ramifications on the team thus far.

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Rice baseball pushes UAB to the wire, but drops first C-USA series 2-1

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Rice Baseball pushed UAB to the brink in a decisive rubber match but missed the chance of their first series win by the slimmest of margins.

THREE FOR THE ROAD | Rice baseball drops series 2-1

If two blowout victories in midweek games wasn’t a clear enough indication, a hard-fought opening weekend to conference play served as further proof this Rice baseball squad has turned the corner. Who knows what was said following a 10-1 Friday night shellacking at the hands of Texas Tech, but ever since, this has been a different ball club.

Last Time Out: Rice baseball blasts SFA and Sam Houston in midweek wins

Rice baseball won their first Friday night contest of the season and leaves the weekend feeling like they ought to have won the series. That’s tremendous progress for a team that was struggling to win singular games of any sort a few weeks ago.

“There’s something here,” Rice baseball head coach Jose Cruz Jr. said after the series. “We’re working it.”

Texas A&M comes to town on Tuesday after taking a weekend series from a ranked LSU squad, promising to challenge the Owls even further. But before we turn the page, a few takeaways from the weekend.

1. The bats are back in town

Following last a sweep at the hands of Texas Tech, Rice baseball was averaging 3.5 runs per game. There had really only been three solid performances at the plate through 18 games — An eight-run Sunday against Lamar, a seven-run midweek outing against Houston and nine runs in the series finale against Harvard. Every other outing was unremarkable, at best.

When things clicked, the Owls’ offense exploded. Beginning with a 19-run outburst against SFA on Tuesday, Rice would score 13 against Sam Houston on Wednesday and tallies of eight, six and eight runs against UAB. Rice baseball averaged a whopping 10.8 runs per game in those five contests.

This is lightyears ahead of anything the Owls have put forth at the plate so far this season and it’s risen from a collective step-change across the breadth of the lineup. If Rice can hit like this, they’re going to continue winning games.

2. Secret weapon Matthew Linskey

Perhaps no player on the entire Rice baseball roster has elevated their game to the same degree as closer Matthew Linskey. The sophomore hurler appeared in 10 contests last season and finished with a 7.15 ERA. He had 12 strikeouts and 14 walks in 11.1 innings. He had some good outings, but he wasn’t anywhere near the shut-down pitcher he’s become this season.

“I think he understands his body,” Cruz Jr. said. “There’s been a few adjustments made on his mechanics and he’s really become a force for us, which is great for us.”

So far in 2022, Linskey has already worked a stretch in which he retired 14 out of 16 batters with strikeouts. Entering the season, he had never retired the side with three-straight K’s in his career. He’s done that twice already this season and accrued three strikeouts in exactly 1.0 inning of work on four separate occasions.

3. Playing better baseball

It hasn’t always been a masterclass in how baseball should be played, but the simple face of the matter is this: Rice baseball has won three of five — and they nearly walked it off on Sunday — after sputtering to a 5-13 start to the regular season. And beyond the final box scores, the Owls simply looked like a different team this week.

Cruz Jr admitted dropping the series was disappointing, but he seemed cognizant of the overarching growth saying that he thinks the Owls are finally “finding their groove when it comes to the lineup, the roles and rhythm. Which is great.”

There’s more to work on. The Rice pitching staff looked vulnerable on too many occasions this weekend, giving up 17 hits in the Sunday finale. Even though they won it, the Rice defense still compiled another five-error game, their third of the season. Those need to be cleaned up, but the Owls have something solid to build on.

THE PLAY BY PLAY

FRIDAY | Rice 8 – UAB 7

There was nothing conventional about the opening game of the series which started as a pitcher’s duel and ended as a slugfest. Cooper Chandler put up zeroes on the mound for the Owls through six innings, collecting seven strikeouts in what was undoubtedly his best outing in a Rice baseball uniform.

Rice took the lead early via three home runs, one from Austin Bulman and two from Aaron Smigelski. Up 4-0, Rice surrendered six runs to the Blazers in the top of the sixth before punching back with four runs of their own in the bottom of the frame.

With Rice leading 8-7, closer Matthew Linskey would enter with one out in the top of the eighth and work a five-out save to notch the Owls’ first Friday night win of the season.

SATURDAY | UAB 10 – Rice 6

There were moments when it felt like Saturday’s game would be a mere reprisal of the Friday night affair. UAB put up the first crooked number of the day in the third inning, scoring three to break a scoreless start by both sides. Rice took the lead with a four-run fourth, riding a series of RBI singles and one sac fly to pull ahead.

Unlike Friday, though, Rice didn’t have enough in the tank on the mound or the plate to hold that advantage. UAB ripped the lead right back in the fifth and extended their advantage to 10-6 in the eighth, roughing up Brandon Deskins and Reed Gallant in the process. UAB would hold on to win by that score

SUNDAY | UAB 9 – Rice 8

The theme of unraveling pitching staffs and crooked numbers continued into the rubber game of the series. Both teams swapped single runs in the first inning. UAB would take a brief 2-1 lead heading into the fifth before expanding that edge to 6-1 as they drove Rice starter Parker Smith from the ballgame.

Down, but not defeated, Rice answered with a four-spot in the seventh inning, aided by the fourth home run from Smigelski on the weekend. The two sides would trade runs in the next two innings and UAB’s skipper would get tossed. It would finally come down to a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the bottom of the ninth. Rice needed three runs to win or two to tie. They got one, falling 9-8.

ON DECK | Rice baseball vs Texas A&M (Tues), at Marshall (Fri-Sun)

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CBI Tournament: Ohio stuns Rice Basketball at the buzzer

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Leading with five seconds on the clock, Rice Basketball watched their CBI Tournament stint come to an end on a buzzer-beating shot by Ohio.

Rice basketball showed up roughly 10 minutes late for the 6:30 p.m. tipoff of the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) Tournament. The Owls were on the court at the same time as their opponent, the Ohio Bobcats, but it took the Owls a while to get going and the Bobcats were right on time.

Ohio scored the first three baskets of the game and burst out to a 13-point lead before the game clock hit 10:00 in the first half. Rice was turning the ball over, they were shooting 20 percent from the field. Nothing was going right as they veered dangerously close to hitting the beach early.

Head coach Scott Pera saw it the same way. When asked what happened at that pivotal moment in the game, Pera shot straight: “The Rice basketball team showed up after 17-4 because I don’t know what was going on to start it,” he said. “We took a deep breath. We recovered and made it a game the rest of the way.”

More: Rice Football Spring Practice Notebook No. 1: Introductions

Trailing by 13, Rice roared back, outscoring Ohio 18-5 over the next six minutes and change to tie the game back up at 24-24. Rather than call it a season, Rice responded with an emphatic “Not Done Yet.” The Owls would go into halftime trailing by one, very much so back in the game.

The second half was much closer. Although Ohio led for the vast majority of the remainder of the contest, their advantage seemed to hang near six or seven points for much of the half. Their latest lead of the half, a 10-point margin that pushed the Owls into do-or-die mode, came with 5:24 to play. Once more, Rice fought back.

Carl Pierre was electric when in mattered most. He scored nine points in the final four minutes include the jumper with five seconds on the clock that looked like it might send Rice basketball through to the second round.

But it wasn’t to be. For as furious as the Owls’ rally had been, things ended one defensive stand shy of victory.  Ohio grabbed the ball and dashed down the court, hitting a layup at the buzzer to sink the Owls’ further postseason dreams.

Player Spotlight | Travis Evee

As beat up and under-manned as Rice basketball was down the stretch, they could ill afford to get negligible production from their core players. That’s part of what made Trave Evee’s cold snap over the Owls’ last three games so devasting. He averaged 6.0 points per game in those three contests, shooting 14 percent from the field.

So when Rice fell behind early, it was now or never for Evee. He hit his first three of the game with 5:37 to play in the first half, then spurred an 8-0 Rice run with a fastbreak layup shortly after. He would finish with 12 points, second-most on the team, also adding four rebounds, four assists and a setal.

Stat Corner | 94 percent

Green Light U, as Rice basketball dubbed themselves early this season, was founded on the Owls’ ability to shoot, and to shoot well. Entering the postseason, Rice basketball had won 15 of 16 games when Rice finished with a better field goal percentage than their opponents. The opposite was also true — Rice had lost 15 of 16 games in which their opponents had out-shot them.

So when Carl Pierre hit a jumper with five seconds to play and Rice was outshooting Ohio 45.9 percent to 39.1 percent, it seemed like Rice was going to pull out the win just as they’d 94 percent of the time throughout the season.

Unfortunately for him and the Owls, tonight was a night where the conventional numbers weren’t hitting as they used to. Rice shot a season-low five free throws to counteract their shooting edge.

Final Box | Ohio 65 – Rice 64

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