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Rice Football Burning Questions: How high is the team’s ceiling in 2021?

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Now in Year 4, Mike Bloomgren and Rice football will face the highest expectations they’ve encountered to this point. How far can they realistically go?

Things were never expected to get better for Rice football overnight. The roster needed retooling. New schemes needed to be put in place and other adjustments were necessary in the name of program-building. With three years* (two, plus whatever the COVID-19 season counts as) to tinker, the expectations are starting to mount.

Which brings us to the third installment in our Burning Questions series this offseason. What are fair expectations for Rice football in 2021 and more importantly, can they reach them?

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Rice Football Recruiting: 2022 Safety Reece Sylvester commits to Owls

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The 2022 Rice Football recruiting class closed the summer on a high note, adding safety Reece Sylvester to the fold as the calendar marches toward the fall.

Fall camp is right around the corner, but that hasn’t slowed the Owls down on the recruiting front. The 2022 Rice Football recruiting class has now added its sixth member to the fold, earning a commitment from Baytown Sterling safety Reece Sylvester.

Sylvester is the second defensive back among the Owls’ current 2022 commits and the fourth defensive player so far. The other safety in the class, Southwest Christian safety Tyson Flowers, was the most recent pledge prior to Sylvester.

Rice was the first to offer Sylvester, who had no other public offers when Rice made their push in mid-July. That was true on August 1 when Sylvester decided to pull the trigger.

Sylvester played a little on both sides of the ball in high school, but although he proved himself a capable wide receiver, he’ll primarily slide in at safety for the Owls. The proven versatility and knowledge of the game should give him a leg up in Brian Smith’s defense.

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When it comes to his prowess as a safety, Sylvester is an intriguing prospect. He reads the ball well coming out of the quarterback’s hand and closes the distance between himself and the pass catcher at a furious rate. When he gets there, he’s not afraid to deliver a punishing blow. His pursuit seems to have an extra gear and his drive has the makings of a difference maker at the next level.

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The Roost Podcast | Ep 84 – Conference USA Football with Phil Steele

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Creator of one of the most in-depth previews in college football, Phil Steele joins the show this week to dig into his 2021 Conference USA football outlook.

We were fortunate enough to cross paths this week with Phil Steele, create of the most jam-packed college football preview year after year. He was excited to step away debates about the Alabama’s and Texas’s of the world, turning his attention this week to the UAB’s and Texas San-Antonio’s of Conference USA.

Be sure to stick around for some Conference USA sleepers that Steele thinks could have big years, including a couple of picks from the Rice roster. You can always find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, give a listen to Episode 84.

Episode Notes

  • Housekeeping
    • Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice. Every little bit helps.
    • Please support us on Patreon. Be the first to get the inside scoop on what’s going on with Rice football and stick around for even further analysis. That includes our debriefing series on spring football, recruiting news and more.
      Become a Patron!
    • Pick up your copy of the Rice Football or Conference USA Season Preview today or as it’s been called by others, The Bible for Conference USA!
  • Phil Steele joins the show — Steele unpacks his Conference USA projections and dives deeper into the 2021 Rice Football season, including:
    • The impact Luke McCaffrey will have on Rice football
    • Where Rice fits in his Conference USA projections
    • The potential upside Rice football has in 2021
    • How the magazine comes together
    • Under-the-radar players to watch in Conference USA

Where can you find us?

Download and subscribe to The Roost Podcast on any of your favorite podcast providers. The show is available on iTunes, GooglePlay, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and PodBean. Please consider leaving a review wherever you listen.

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CUSA Media Day Roundup: All eyes on the Rice football offense

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After a busy offseason, change was the pivotal word for Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren when speaking about his offense in 2021.

The Rice football defense was one of the most dominant units in Conference USA last year. The Owls climbed all the way up to No. 12 in the nation in scoring defense and blanked a Top 15 team on the road. If any facet of this team deserved to be the focal point of conversation when the 2021 season rolled around, the defense had done everything they conceivably could to put themselves in the spotlight.

But beginning with the first question Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren was asked during Conference USA Media Days and proceeding to the last, the focus was clear: offense, offense, offense.

To some extent, the defense is a known commodity at this point. They’re going to be good, really good. But minus one notable departure, former linebacker Blaze Alldredge, that unit will look the same. The offense is going to look different.

Read more in the 2021 Rice Football Season Preview, available for purchase now. 150+ pages on Rice football, their 2021 opponents and more.

“I’m not normally very comfortable with change,” Bloomgren admitted in his opening remarks, “but I’m excited about these changes,” he said, referring primarily to the hiring of new offensive coordinator Marques Tuiasosopo. The addition of transfer quarterback Luke McCaffrey fits in that “change” category as well.

Bloomgren didn’t get too far into x’s and o’s, beyond specifying from a play design and scheme standpoint “a lot of it’s the same”, with only so many different combinations of blocks and routes. But how that offense is executed, and who’s executing on those instructions is what’s meant to be differential.

That’s where Luke McCaffrey comes in. Although he wasn’t guaranteed anything beyond a locker and helmet when he arrived, early returns are already positive. Bloomgren was effusive when praising his character and how he carried himself. The on the field production, that matters too.

“That’s a very talented individual that’s been successful on a big stage coming to our program,” Bloomgren said knowingly before getting into how the offense can utilize the run game to take shots downfield. They’ll also have the benefit of returning all five starting offensive linemen, what Bloomgren estimates is probably a first for him in his coaching career.

Add in 10 returning offensive starters overall and you get a delicate mix of familiarity and change. How the coaching staff sorts through the chaos and puts the pieces together will mean all the difference.

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Olympian Ariana Ince, a fitting ambassador of Rice Athletics, on and off the field

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Ariana Ince will represent Rice Athletics and the State of Texas in the Tokyo Olympic Games, the culmination of many years of preparation.

A decade removed from her time as an undergraduate student at Rice University, the former Rice Athletics star Ariana Ince hasn’t forgotten her roots. Even though she’s since moved out west to California and works full time in the Golden State, she’s still very much connected to her time in Houston and her journey that began there so many years ago.

Now 32, Ince spends her days in the ergonomics industry. But that’s where the similarities between her and many of her classmates stop. Ince isn’t like every other young business professional. While others juggle commutes and deadlines, Ince has added another, much more expeditious projectile: the javelin. And she’s taken that passion as far as it can go, earning a spot to represent the United States in the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Her journey began at Rice in 2010 where she won Conference USA Championships in the pole vault. Then one day, during a workout at Herman Park, her focus began to shift. She’d stumbled upon a collection of apples near the bottom of a hill near the auditorium. In a bid to get out of the remainder of the workout, Ince made a bet with her coach that she could hit a chain fence at the top of the hill.

“I don’t remember how far away it was,” Ince recalled, “but it was car enough that [coach] thought I couldn’t do it.”

Ince grabbed an apple and let it fly. It sailed through the air, not only hitting the fence but going straight through it and exploding into a million pieces. And so the switch to javelin began. In the years that followed, she’s continued to hone her craft, spending time as a volunteer coach at Texas A&M and later training at the Olympic Training Center in California.

“Zoom doesn’t have a smell function,” she jokes as she relays the daily rigors of training in conjunction with the more normative challenges of the 9-to-5 life. Whether it’s dashing back and forth from the track to meetings without time to shower or the contrast of teaching others proper posture while contorting her own body to hurl a spear after hours, Ince has remained focused in the midst of it all.

Ince qualified for the Olympics based on her World Rankings score after placing fourth at the US Olympic Trials in late June. That comes months after the Games were delayed by COVID-19 and Ince, like many others, saw their professional athletic aspirations put on pause.

During the limbo, she continued working, spending time with a teammate in Colorado to train before returning to California. Months later, with a spot in the Games secure and a ticket punched to Tokyo, she can hardly process the magnitude. “I think probably I’ll feel a little bit incredulous,” she said, “that like, I actually did it.”

When she steps onto the field in Tokyo later this month, she’ll join Funmi Jimoh as the only two female Rice athletes to represent the United States at the Olympics. Ince says she knows Jimoh and the two have already joked about having meetings as the lone members of the exclusive club. The magnitude of that realization continues to loom large.

That connection, to Jimoh, to Rice and to her hometown of Gonzalez, Texas are things she’ll proudly bring with her on the journey. “Those ‘Come and Take It’ Flags,” she said with a grin, “We’re very proud of that.”

When the Olympic fanfare comes to an end, Ince has no plans to slow down. She’s already charted out a course of international competitions that span the next five years beyond Tokyo. The javelin is still very much in her future, just like it’s been a part of the present. And all the while, she’ll be helping others with their posture when the time comes to her “day job”.

“It makes me feel really balanced,” Ince says of her simultaneous pursuits of athletic and professional life, “I don’t have that same concern like ‘What do I do after sport?’ My whole thought process is life after sport is going to be so easy. All I have to do is go to work? Please, that’s going to be too easy.”

An observer of our zoom call to this point, current Rice Track and Field coach Jim Bevan chimes in with a brief, but a fitting review. “It’s such a treasure to listen to a Rice athlete being interviewed because they bring more to the page than just athletics,” he said. “I think it speaks well to Rice because we do truly feel we’re the home of the true student-athlete.”

Student. Check.

Athlete. Check.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, in so many ways, Ince has knocked both facets of her life out of the park. She admits she’ll probably have to find a new hobby when it does come time to hang up the cleats. But for now, she’s enjoying the ride. Now it’s onto Tokyo, and hopefully, a spot in the Finals.

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