The source for Rice sports news
Roster churn has become a part of college sports as we know and Rice basketball is not immune to the ebb and flow of players coming in and out. With the 2024-2025 season in the books, this page will serve as a running tracker regarding the roster for the upcoming season as it currently stands. The last official roster is available here.
Feel free to bookmark it and refer back to it from time to time as players announce their intentions throughout the offseason.
A dynamic JUCO hooper is joining the 2025 Rice basketball recruiting class. Forward Eternity Eguagie has committed to the Owls. Since he arrived at South Main, head coach Rob Lanier has made it abundantly clear he’ll look everywhere for talented playmakers to add to his roster. The most recent addition to the 2025 Rice Basketball […]
The Transfer Portal remains kind to Rice basketball recruiting efforts. Mount St. Mary’s guard Dallas Hobbs has committed to the Owls. A high-scoring point guard with NCAA Tournament experience is heading to South Main as the most recent addition to the 2025 Rice Basketball recruiting class. Mount St. Mary’s guard Dallas Hobbs has committed to […]
Another Transfer Portal addition to the Rice basketball recruiting class has been announced. Prairie View A&M guard Nick Anderson committed to the Owls. Days after the Transfer Portal has opened the 2025 Rice Basketball recruiting class has grown by two. Following the commitment of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi center Stephen Giwa on Thursday, the Owls have […]
The Rice basketball roster is going through its usual offseason permutations. Stay tuned here for updates as the Transfer Portal turns. Roster churn has become a part of college sports as we know and Rice basketball is not immune to the ebb and flow of players coming in and out. With the 2024-2025 season in […]
The first Transfer Portal addition of the incoming Rice basketball recruiting class is on board. Texas A&M Corpus Christi center Stephen Giwa has committed to the Owls. Transfer Portal season is upon us, which means new faces for the incoming Rice basketball recruiting class. A few players have already announced their intentions to leave South […]
By the time the first player rose from the dugout and began the walk back towards the locker rooms, the stands of Reckling Park had been emptied and attendants had long since finished combing the stadium seats for loose trash. Outside a few scattered family members down the right field line, the facilities were empty, with the exception of head coach David Pierce, his assistants, and every member of the Rice baseball team, huddled together in the dugout for an impromptu team meeting.
Pierce held court for 59 minutes following a 20-5 defeat at the hands of UT Rio Grande Valley. The words weren’t audible from the stands, but the tone was clear. Everyone in the dugout needed to wake up.
“We’re just really trying to find out who we are, not necessarily even as baseball players, just as teammates, the respect for each other and the accountability,” Pierce summed up after the lengthy gathering. “I think once we start becoming a closer team and chemistry’s built and accountability takes place, you won’t see those types of games.”
Pierce noted the conversation ranged from upperclassmen and underclassmen roles to leadership, body language on the field and how the players were treating each other.
“I told them, I lost my job last year. And I learned a lot about myself and learned a lot about falling back in love with just the purity of the game,” Pierce said. “And that’s really what I want them to do. Don’t worry about the record, become more involved in each other.”
Coaching isn’t a one-size-fits all type of business. And while there’s no better way to measure its effectiveness than wins and losses, there’s something to be said for the time spent in the dugout on Wednesday night by a coach whom quite easily could have assumed leadership and accountability for this program after an offseason of improvements yet instead chose to get his hands dirty in the midst of a season already veering off center.
“This could be a perfect night for us if they take it the right way,” Pierce said.
Moments like this are part of what pulled Pierce back to South Main after so many years away.
“I told them every day how much I love this place and it’s my mission to get the mentality the way it’s supposed to be and [to elevate] the cultural and the standard. And I’m not gonna stop until we get that,” he declared. “And if we got guys that are just cruising, then they don’t need to play, they probably don’t need to travel and probably don’t need to be on the roster.
“But they have the opportunity right now to flip the switch and really, just get back to enjoying the game and enjoying being in a clubhouse with teammates because it’s going to pass them by.”
On Tuesday, the Texas State team Pierce was assisting at the beginning of the season defeated No. 5 Texas. Sticking around in San Marcos would have been the easier path. Yet here Pierce is, spending 59 minutes in a post game dugout, pouring his heart and soul into players someone else recruited, days removed from taking over a 5-17 team that didn’t reach that record by happenstance.
“I can handle anything. I mean, at the end of the day, I’ve been through it on both sides,” Pierce remarked, shaking off the single game result as he willed his players to see the bigger picture.
“I just was so fortunate to be a part of what Coach [Wayne Graham] started and be a piece of the nine-year share of what this place became,” he said. “And that’s my goal, my mission, to just get that attitude and the fan base excited about us playing. There’s a lot of things that need to be done. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I want to make sure that I do everything possible for these guys. I think they want it. They just don’t know how to get it yet.”
Rice football wide receiver Matt Sykes had the best spring of any player at his position, bar none. It was hard to walk through the halls of the Brian Patterson Center and avoid the chatter about the transfer wideout’s big step forward. Coaches and teammates were quick to speak of his playmaking ability at practices. The drumbeat for a breakthrough season was there.
But at the same time, it was just spring football.
Countless players have shown out in the spring when nobody wearing a different color jersey breaks across the middle of the field and delivers a jarring hit the stakes are lower. Translating practice into game day has always been the differentiator between good and great. Sykes had done all the right things, but he still hadn’t done it on Saturdays, not yet.
Sykes caught one pass in his first season at Rice following a transfer from UCLA. Injuries and inconsistent play kept him from making a more meaningful impact that season. Then came the strong spring and a chaotic fall camp that transformed the Owls’ feel-good story from a luxury to a desperate need. Sykes wasn’t going to be eased into his new role. He was needed now.
Landon Ransom, Rawson MacNeill and Thai Bowman were thought to be the Owls’ top three receivers entering the season. All three of them were injured in some capacity by the time the 2024 season began. Suddenly, Sykes’ emergence was essential.
In the Owls’ season opener against Sam Houston, Sykes caught six balls for 74 yards, both career-highs in his fifth season of college football. He followed that up with two catches for 47 yards and his first Rice touchdown grab a week later against Texas Southern. For a receiving corps decimated by injuries in need of a playmaker, Sykes delivered.
“I feel a lot more comfortable,” Sykes said, evaluating the difference between his first and second season on South Main. “Getting a lot of reps, just feeling back in my flow. [I’m] really confident, playing fast.”
Sykes would continue to be the primary target for Rice quarterback EJ Warner as the season progressed. As the offense ebbed at flowed, having No. 8 on the field proved to be a positive more often than not. As his production on the field grew, expectations came with it. More and more was asked of Sykes as the offense tried to find its way.
“The thing that I’m most impressed with him and most pleased with him about is that I think he wants to step up. I think he’s capable of doing it. Like I said, he hasn’t arrived yet, but I think he’s on his path to being that guy,” receivers coach Bobby Kennedy said. “Because of him and the way he works, you think, okay, maybe he can get this done. Maybe he can really, really, really be the guy. And if he continues to have some more success, I’m excited to see what happens as games go on because I think he’s got it in him.”
Although so much of what Sykes did on the field was encouraging, there were still growing pains that come with less experienced players growing their roles so quickly. Sykes struggled through some concentration drops against Army and had a pass tip off his hands into the waiting arms of a defender for an interception.
Adversity is part of the game, but it’s also one of the reasons Sykes’ coaches theorize he’d yet to emerge in a significant way on Saturdays. Coaches pointed to a lack of confidence in the old Matt Sykes, a tendency to get in his own head and get rattled with things didn’t go according to plan. The veteran player had struggled when faced with trying situations in the past, but with no relief coming, something was going to have to change.
Sykes responded to a rough start against Army with a flawless touchdown grab later in the game. Then he authored the best game of his college football career.
Against Charlotte the following week Sykes hauled in a career-best eight passes for a career-high 97 yards. A 25-yard reception in the fourth quarter put Rice in position to attempt a game-winning field one play following what could have been a debilitating penalty that set the offense back near midfield.
At that point, the grab was one of the most high-leverage moments in Sykes’ well-traveled career. This time, he made the play.
Unfortunately, Rice football didn’t win that game. A missed field goal at the end of a regulation made Sykes’ valiant effort for naught. For as far as he had come to that point, the Owls still needed a little bit more from their new go-to receiver. Could Sykes transcend from reliable to game-changer?
Sykes almost didn’t get that chance. A week and a half later he found himself in a hospital bed, forced to check himself into the emergency room on the Monday evening prior to the Owls’ next game against UTSA. He stayed in the hospital for almost three days. “He was essentially ruled out,” Bloomgren admitted.
The situation got so dire that the team elevated multiple scout team players during the week to take reps with the first team offense. Corner Sean Fresch even made a cameo appearance as a receiving threat. It was all hands on deck with Sykes, regrettably, sidelined.
Then the first miracle happened. Sykes walked out of the hospital and was cleared to return to practice. Members of the coaching staff were making resurrection jokes on the sideline while inwardly breathing sighs of relief that their top passing game option would be on the field, still not knowing for sure how much he’d have in the tank to give. As it turns out, he had plenty.
Days removed from his hospital bed, Sykes hauled in seven receptions for 85 yards, setting a career-high in receiving for the fourth time this season and the third consecutive game. This time, though, it wasn’t just the counting stats that told the story.
With nine seconds remaining on the clock on third down, Rice had the ball at the UTSA 18-yard line trailing by four points with one time-out. Even by conservative estimates, that meant the Owls had time for two shots at the endzone should they require it. Warner took the snap, dropped back and fired a missile to the middle of the field, finding the fingertips of Sykes at the top of the capital C in the white RICE OWLS lettering that adorned the navy blue endzone.
Blanketed by a defender who had one hand already on his jersey and another swiping at the ball, Sykes momentarily juggled the pigskin in the air before hauling the precious rock into his arms, which smacked the turf in bounds milliseconds later. At that moment, fans listening to the radio broadcast heard longtime Rice Owls Voice announcer JP Heath exclaim, “Matt Sykes pulls down a miracle, back of the endzone, Rice scores.”
Touchdown. Not only had Sykes secured the ball, he’d won Rice the game.
“I knew I was definitely one of the reads to get open on the post and I know EJ likes to take chances with me so I knew, regardless, that I had to win my route,” Sykes said after the game. “I knew that was a must-do, do-or-die moment, so I had to come down with it.”
In so many ways, Sykes’ journey has been unbelievable. A fifth-year senior who had one catch to his name and was bound to a hospital bed just days before had somehow transformed into a storybook ending.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” Sykes said. “I don’t think I’ll ever have something like this again, to feel this great.”
The 2024 version of Matt Sykes remains a work in progress. There will be more highs and lows along the way. But it’s hard to imagine where Rice football would be without him.
“He just became a dominant catcher of the ball, like he was so confident in his ability, he saw the ball in the sky and went and got it,” head coach Mike Bloomgren said of Sykes’ ascension. “That’s the standard he set for himself and what we have to expect of him. When you ask what’s different, I think it came down to confidence in allowing him to grow into the player we thought he could be.”
Parker Smith’s desire to one day play for Rice baseball began as early on as his elementary school years. The initial passion was cultivated at Reckling Park, the Owls’ ballfield which hosted the collegiate team every spring before giving way to youth camps in the summers — the very same youth camps Smith grew up attending.
Smith, a Bellaire native from just down the road, was only 10 years old or so at the time, but he still remembers being on that field and having those dreams.
He dutifully came to camp at Rice year after year, ostensibly there to learn about baseball. But the ballpark itself and the traditions and trimmings of Rice baseball which surrounded it started to make a mark on his young mind, too.
A pastime that began, he later joked, “just so my parents could get me out of the house”, continued to grow. Summer camps turned into private lessons, first with volunteer assistant Clay Van Hook and then with volunteer assistant Pat Hallmark. It was during those days the dream really began to take hold.
“I was around the ballpark a lot and it kind of imprinted on me,” Smith said “I knew my way around the offices and the [pitching] lab.”
Almost by happenstance, Rice had become a part of Smith before he had become a part of Rice. Smith continued to show up and continued to learn.
Every young boy dreams of playing in the major leagues from the moment they first pick up a bat. Smith certainly had those aspirations too, but it wouldn’t feel right if his path didn’t first go through West University Place and Rice baseball.
Eventually, the proverbial call would come, albeit in a manner Smith could never have anticipated. A right-handed pitcher with a successful high school career at Bellaire, Smith had been lightly recruited, which came with one reassuring caveat. His dream school, Rice, wanted him to make the short drive to South Main and play for the Owls.
There was a catch, though, and it was a big one. Recruited initially by head coach Matt Bragga, Smith had been informed the Owls would be moving on from the manager following the 2021 season. If he were to commit, it would be to a program without a coach.
Many players would have balked at such a suggestion. Commit without a coach? But Smith was deadset. He wanted to pitch for Rice. So, despite the uncertainty, he made the leap and committed to the university of his boyhood dreams.
Bragga was relieved of his duties soon after. Weeks later, Rice would announce the hiring of current head coach Jose Cruz Jr. That fall Smith was on campus and just like that his Rice career — a dream that had been cultivated and nurtured for more than a decade — had become a reality. But there was still more work left to be done.
For those who follow college baseball, there’s something unconventionally curious about midweek games. In short: they’re breeding grounds for chaos.
The most established pitchers, the aces, are reserved for Friday night. If a team is chock full of arm talent, that might bleed into Saturday, perhaps even Sunday. All bets are off by the time you get to Tuesday or Wednesday.
It’s unusual for 15-run games to happen very often on Fridays when both teams are throwing their top arms. By Wednesday, however, things can get squirrely fast.
Wednesday is the proving ground for underclassmen, for veterans struggling to climb the ladder back into more prominent weekend roles. That’s primarily where Smith landed in his first year on campus and it’s when he earned his first start, just down the road against Houston Baptist.
Smith was dominant that night, earning his first career win while tossing six innings of shutout ball with four strikeouts. He allowed just two hits. The next week, also on a Wednesday, he was tagged for six runs (although only two were earned) in 4.2 innings against Baylor. To this day, he’s never given up more runs in a collegiate game. Thus were the ups and downs of learning on the job.
Despite the ever-changing assignments, Smith made the most of a challenging freshman season. By midseason he was appearing regularly on the weekend, tallying three Saturday appearances and four Sunday outings. He was never the front-line Friday night guy, that was Cooper Chandler’s role, but he was getting closer and closer to the top of the pecking order.
Looking back, Smith attributes some of his early struggles to that constant uncertainty. “Bouncing around and not being able really to have a routine [was hard],” he said. Would one bad night get him banished to the back end of the bench? The worries crossed his mind, he admitted.
Even with those doubts, Smith’s talent had a knack for overcoming adverse circumstances. He made the final start of the season for the Owls on May 21 against FIU, throwing 5.1 innings and allowing three hits and one run en route to a Rice win, ensuring the only series sweep the team registered all year.
The victory was a high point, both for the Owls and for Smith, who felt a change coming to a program yearning to take the next steps back toward greatness.
The first-year pitcher ended the regular season with the best ERA among Rice baseball starters (4.19) and made the second most starts on the team (10), three of which came against crosstown rival Houston, earning Smith a selection to the All-Silver Glove team. It was a promising beginning for the young hurler who seemingly hadn’t yet found his groove.
Following the season finale against FIU, head coach Jose Cruz Jr. singled Smith out specifically in his postgame comments. “He’s a freshman,” Cruz Jr. said, “and we have big plans for him.”
Baseball truly is a year-round sport, particularly for those with an itch to better themselves and hone their craft. Smith, as many players do, made the commitment to offseason work.
Following his debut freshman season he packed his bags and headed west to the California Collegiate League where he spent the summer as a member of the Santa Barbara Foresters. Something clicked for Smith while pitching with the Foresters. In seven starts, he went 5-0 with a 2.31 ERA and a 1.07 WHIP with 37 strikeouts in 25 innings.
His final outing came in the league championship game and he dazzled, throwing six innings of one-run ball, allowing just four hits and striking out five. Behind Smith’s strong start, the Foresters won the title.
The triumph was the capstone moment in a summer of growth and self-assurance. “It was the first time where the ERA had been kind of eye-popping,” Smith said. “It was nice to know, ‘I’m good. I can hang with anybody,’ and that mentality I kind of brought into this fall and spring.”
That mental shift meant everything to Smith.
“No matter what happens, who does something, who hits a home run off you, that didn’t make me bad,” Smith recounted. “I missed a spot. I’m still good. I’m still better than the hitter in the box, no matter what.”
More than any strikeout total or ERA threshold, that discovery unlocked something inside of Smith and set the course for a breakthrough 2023 season. He didn’t add any pitches or drastically overhaul his approach on the mound. He believed in himself, truly believed, and attacked the offseason with a zealousness that was impossible to miss.
Cruz Jr. took notice of the intensity with which he approached his training. “He wants to be great,” he said of Smith. “He works really hard. He wants the ball.”
Aided by pitching coach Parker Bangs, the Pigpen Pitching Lab and that extra level of determination, Smith set out to improve the little things. His only meaningful mechanical adjustment came with his windup motion. His offseason focus became cleaning that up and streamlining it to the point where it was as good as he could make it.
In Smith’s eyes, those tweaks have made all the difference. “The pitches break later, they’re sharper and they move better,” he said of the changes. “Being able to clean [the mechanics] up is why that’s been able to happen.”
Everything felt right and performed well in intrasquads. All that was left was to take those adjustments to the field and throw against players in different jerseys.
Smith hit the first batter. Then, after a wild pitch, he fell victim to a bunt single that put two men on without any outs. A single put Louisana ahead 1-0. Soon after, another single made it 2-0. Then a sac fly put Smith and Rice in a 3-0 hole.
In the span of 15 minutes of action, Smith had fallen behind 3-0 in what was, at that point, the most prominent start of his pitching career.
“I would have crumbled,” Smith said. “Last year, once things started going bad, they went really bad.”
Not this year, though. Not only did Smith get out of the inning without allowing further runs, he sent nine of the next 10 Louisiana batters down in a row, allowing one walk sandwiched in between what could only be described as a dominant stretch through the middle innings.
By the time Smith was relieved in the top of the seventh inning by Krisha Raj, Rice had the lead and Smith was in line for the win if the Owls could hold on. Louisiana would rally to take the lead, spoiling a final decision for Smith, but even without the win, the groundwork for a breakthrough season had been laid.
In baseball terms, Smith’s final line — 6 innings pitched, three earned runs allowed, five hits, one walk and five strikeouts — qualified as a quality start. He’d given his team innings and kept them in the game. It wasn’t a perfect outing, but it was good, really good. And it put his team in a position to win. And that was the ultimate goal, after all.
For Smith, how he got there was almost as important as the end result.
“We have a mantra in our pitching staff,” Smith said. “Pitch by pitch. You focus on the pitch that’s at hand. You don’t focus on any other pitch. You focus on what you’ve got to do now, in this moment, and don’t let everything else weigh on top of you.”
“It’s one pitch. You’ve done it a million times. And then you get the ball back, and it’s the next pitch.”
That’s how Smith has attacked the season, pitch by pitch. His 2.75 ERA is the lowest of any starter in Conference USA and ranks inside the Top 25 among all pitchers in the nation. Rice baseball — a program renowned for its pitching prowess — hasn’t produced a qualified pitcher with an ERA that low since 2018.
There was no doubting it. Smith had turned himself into a bonafide ace. His head coach agrees.
“He’s a bulldog.” Cruz Jr. said. “He works hard. His stuff has been really good. He’s able to move the ball around the zone. He has multiple pitches to get you out on. He’s a complete Friday night guy. And he wants the ball.”
Sitting in the dugout on the morning of the Owls’ final regular season game, Smith drank in the entire surreal experience. “People know who I am now,” he joked with an amused smile on his face. “It’s kind of fun to be the first ‘ace’ in a good while.”
The word ace, as he said it, seemed to come naturally to him. Even if it came accompanied by a humble, “quote-unquote” gesture with his fingers. Truthfully, though, the moniker fits.
Even though so much has transpired since, Smith still carries himself as one who remembered the days spent practicing on the field in front of him as a youngster.
When Smith takes the mound next it’ll be in his first postseason game as a collegiate pitcher. When he steps across the white line painted onto the turf field the wistfulness will vanish and the bulldog will reemerge.
Rice baseball takes on Dallas Baptist in the first round of the Conference USA Baseball Tournament, somewhat ironically, on a Wednesday.
If the Owls are to make a run deep into the tournament they’ll almost certainly need a gem from Smith along the way. He’s been their anchor all season and he’ll be the one called upon when the lights shine brightest.
Much in the same way his mind focuses on the next pitch when he’s on the mound, he hasn’t gotten overly burdened with the challenges that will bring just yet.
“I haven’t even thought about that,” he said with a grin. “It’ll be fun. I’m excited. It’s a challenge and I welcome it. It’s something I look forward to. Bring it on.”