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Conference USA Football 2022: Week 9 Roundup

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Conference USA Football was back in action this weekend. Here’s the latest from the teams on the gridiron in Week 9.

Team Week 9 Result Up Next
Charlotte at Rice W, 56-23 vs WKU
FAU vs UAB W, 24-17 — OFF —
FIU vs LA Tech W, 42-34 (OT) at North Texas
LA Tech at FIU L, 42-34 (OT) vs MTSU
MTSU at UTEP W, 24-13 at LA Tech
North Texas at WKU W, 40-13 vs FIU
Rice vs Charlotte L, 56-23 vs UTEP
UAB at FAU L, 24-17 vs UTSA
UTEP vs MTSU L, 24-13 at Rice
UTSA — OFF —  — at UAB
WKU vs North Texas L, 40-13 at Charlotte

Notable Week 9 results – Standings

Panthers punch back

It looked like FIU was going to be left for dead after back-to-back uncompetitive losses to UConn and UTSA. Not so fast. The Panthers have won two in a row and find themselves at .500 in league play.  People are officially looking up at the Panthers

Fried Rice

Meanwhile in Houston, Rice did not fair nearly as well against another team that entered the weekend near the bottom of the conference standings. The Owls allowed the Charlotte 49ers to score touchdowns on seven consecutive drives with an interim head coach at the helm. The loss drops Rice to 4-5 and puts bowl prep on hold.

End of the line for Blazers’ stand-in

Bryant Vincent stepped up as the interim head coach at UAB following the sudden retirement of Bill Clark. He was to be given a real chance to keep the job for good if his team produced on the field this season. Through eight games, it seems unlikely he’s met what is (admittedly) a high standard in Birmingham. At 4-4 it would take an improbable conference title run to even reopen the conversation.

Looking ahead – Key storylines

Sort-of-heavyweight rematch

UTSA vs UAB was circled on everyone’s calendars earlier in the season, but the Blazers haven’t held up their end of the bargain. Even still, the talent on the UAB roster will give the Blazers a shot to pull out a big win at home. If they do, they’ll have new life and perhaps even more importantly, reopen the conference championship race for several schools who are nipping at the Roadrunner’s heels.

Crunch time

Both UTEP and Rice had a bowl game circled as proof of continued progress this season. Rice’s loss to Charlotte put pressure on the Owls to split their final four games, which finishes at WKU, vs UTSA and at North Texas after hosting the Miners. UTEP only has three contests left and needs to take two of three from Rice, FIU and UTSA. Sufficient to say, both teams need this one bad.

Race to the bottom

By virtue of Charlotte’s win over Rice, the 49ers are no longer the clear bottom team in the conference standings. Louisiana Tech and Middle Tennessee are back in the conversation for the league’s most woeful team. MTSU and Louisiana Tech get the privilege of deciding that on the field. Loser sits at the bottom of the standings.

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Rice Football rocked by interim-led Charlotte on Homecoming

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The fans were there, but the Rice football team no-showed on its own Homecoming Day as the Owls were blasted by interim coach-led Charlotte.

On an overcast day in Houston, Rice football was only wishing the rain would come. Perhaps then, had the field been deluged by water from the sky, the Owls could have avoided the torrential downpour of 49er touchdowns. Instead, Rice was run out of their own stadium on Homecoming in embarrassing fashion. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

Can’t get off the field

The Rice football defense was supposed to be the backbone of this team. On Saturday, the unit more closely resembled the one that was assaulted through the air by backup quarterbacks the weekend prior against Louisiana Tech. The pass rush had its moments, but on the instances in which the Rice front couldn’t get to quarterback Chris Reynolds, Rice paid dearly.

Reynolds, who entered the season as one of the most proven commodities at the quarterback position in Conference USA, was able to move the ball at will against a Rice defense that ranked No. 3 in C-USA against the pass entering the game. Not only was Charlotte able to move the ball, but they were allowed to do so continually.

A team that fired its head coach six days ago scored touchdowns on seven consecutive drives.

Charlotte ran the ball. They threw the ball. When they reached third down, they converted it. When they didn’t, they found a way on fourth down.

Enabling so many extra opportunities was fuel to the fire. Charlotte got going and gashed the Owls, who chose not to spy quarterback Chris Reynolds and continued to bring heavy pressure as Reynolds picked them apart downfield.

Reynolds threw for 254 yards and five touchdowns. The 49ers ran for 239 yards.

Not having linebacker Myron Morrison and safety George Nyakwol available hampered this unit, but it’s hardly the first time they’ve been without key players. The depth is good enough to get the job done, or at the very least, to do much better than this.

What’s it going to be?

With a loss like this comes questions. Just about every game this season has been laborious for this team. To the Owls’ credit, they’ve won as many as they’ve lost, but the path to get to that end result has usually been messy. What’s most maddening is the lack of consistency from this team from game to game. On any given Saturday, which Rice football team is going to show up?

In years past, it’s been easy to point the finger at the offense. If the team would just score more often, if they’d run better plays, if they’d be more creative… then they could start winning. Well, they are scoring more… but the games are still exhausting.

Is today going to be a day the defense comes close to pitching a shutout? Maybe. Or they could give up 40+ points.

Is today going to be the day the offense gets in gear and puts in the endzone six or seven times? Perhaps. Or they could go backward, turn the ball over a few times, and barely sniff double digits.

The trouble is, Rice really hasn’t seen both of the positive ends of those spectrums coincide. More often than not it’s been a good offensive day (or half) mirrored against a bad defensive outing. That’s led to lots of close games and high heart rates. Winning ugly counts for something. But it’s hard to trust this team from week to week. We just don’t know who is going to show up.

Two steps forward, one step back

For the first time under head coach Mike Bloomgren, Rice football was a multi-touchdown favorite in a home conference game. Cover the spread or not, on paper this was meant to be a game that put Rice one win away from a trip to a bowl game for the first time since 2014. But games aren’t played on paper.

Make no mistake, this was the most embarrassing loss of Bloomgren’s tenure.

Charlotte came out and played like they had nothing to lose. From an onside kick to a fake punt, the 49ers were the aggressor all day long against a team that preaches intellectual brutality. That can’t happen.

It’s impossible to scrap the remainder of the season just yet, especially given the highs we’ve seen both sides of the ball reach on their better days. But the task just got immeasurably harder. Rice should have won this game. Losing would have been disappointing. Losing like this was humiliating. Especially considering this is the same team that beat Louisiana, beat UAB and went toe-to-toe with Houston. Unfortunately, that feels like so long ago.

Rice football has another game to play in five days at home against UTEP. They need to win it, if for no other reason than to purge this awful result from their minds.

Less turnovers but not enough points

Punter Conor Hunt spent most of the first half Saturday standing on the sideline. The Rice offense didn’t have much need of his services until the game was well out of hand. Hunt didn’t punt until the beginning of the third quarter when the game had already started to get out of hand.

For at least the sixth time this season — they don’t exactly keep stats on this — a Rice quarterback was intercepted on a pass that deflected off his receiver’s hands. A deep shot from McMahon on the Owls’ second drive was picked off, setting up a short field for Charlotte and their first score.

The Roost Podcast: Stay tuned for the game recap this week – Rice Football vs Charlotte

The interception and a failed fourth down conversion were early blemishes on what started as a rather uneventful offensive day. Trailing by 11 going into halftime, the offense hasn’t been perfect, but it hadn’t been the reason the Owls were already trailing big.

The offense deserves credit for mostly eliminating the controllable turnovers. They did not fumble the ball to the other team and the lone interception was fluky. On a day in which a lot of things went wrong, that was a tally in the positive direction.

A 100 percent scoring rate would be nice, albeit unsustainable. Rice scored on three of four offensive drives in the first half on Saturday, excluding the kneel-down at the end of the half. That should get it done when you have the defense the Owls do… unless the defense disappears. On Saturday, it did just that. And the offense didn’t have the juice to pick up the pace.

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Rice Football 2022: Charlotte Insider gives his take on the 49ers

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Rice Football takes on a struggling Charlotte program this weekend. Hunter Bailey of The Charlotte Observer fills us in on what to expect in this game.

The Charlotte Observer’s Hunter Bailey was kind enough to stop by and answer a few questions about the upcoming matchup between Rice Football and Charlotte. The answers below should shed some light on the Owls’ upcoming opponent.

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Rice Football 2022: Charlotte Game Week Practice Report

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Rice football hosts Charlotte this weekend in search of win number five. Here’s what we learned from practice this week.

Undefeated at home this season, Rice football returns to South Main as heavy favorites against Charlotte. The Owls won’t be taking the 49ers lightly, and have said as much, addressing some key concerns in practice this week.

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This week’s roundup focuses in on Juma Otoviano and the running back room, the trenches, and injuries as well as some individual highlights from the week.

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Rice Football 2022: Charlotte presser quotes and depth chart

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Rice football hosts Charlotte this week. Here’s what Mike Bloomgren had to say about the matchup at hand and a few depth chart notes.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren and a pair of players met with the media for their customary weekly availability. They recapped the Louisiana Tech win and looked at the week ahead, detailing what they’re expecting to see when Charlotte takes the field.

More: Rice Football – Blue and Gray Preview Show

We touch on those items, then dig into the Rice football depth chart and what the team looks like heading into the weekend. First, the quotes:

Press Conference Quotes

“Defensively, it was certainly not our best game. But, when all the chips were on the line, we found a way to end the game by denying them that two-point opportunity. Again, I chalk that up to all of the hits on the passer and being able to stop the run game all day long. A lot of good things went into that last play, I think.

I want to say this. After preparing for it  and watching it in-game, I don’t think Sonny Cumbie is just a good offensive, creative mind, I think he’s a great one. I think he did a phenomenal job and his kids played incredibly hard. The way that they came out in the first quarter was impressive. The way they fought on both sides of the ball and to jump out on us 10-0. Again, my hats off to what he his building there. But, once again, I’m glad we found a way to win the game.” – Mike Bloomgren on the challenges posed by Louisiana Tech

“I wish I could tell you some unbelievable speech. There were a couple of things that we tweaked at halftime and a couple of changes that we made, but there weren’t many to be quite honest. But in the second quarter, we drove down to the one-yard line and put the ball on the ground. So, it’s not like we weren’t moving the rock. To get the touchdown through the air to Luke [McCaffrey] was a big deal. I think there were a lot of things that went right for us to only be down 10-7 at halftime, including Sean Fresch’s pick in the end zone.

I went into the locker room very grateful to only be down three points with the way we played in the first half. We just had to come out and play our style of football. There’s not going to be a whole lot of magic. I’m very thankful that we were able to come out and execute better.” – Mike Bloomgren on offensive adjustments against Louisiana Tech

“It’s largely the same personnel that we’re gonna play in the Charlotte game again. The good thing about that for us is I think we’ve evolved a lot. We’ve grown a lot. So I welcome that opportunity. We know them well. We know how explosive those receivers are. And we all remember where we were. We were in the fourth quarter, up 10 points, with six minutes to play and [they went] right down the field… We didn’t perform overtime. So we know what the thing look like. But I do think we’re a very different team whereas their cast of characters is pretty similar.” – Mike Bloomgren on how this Charlotte team compares to last year’s team

“That overtime win had been something elusive in my career as a Rice Owl so you can believe I was breathing a sigh of relief and celebrating when we finally got that that elusive overtime win. I was almost in disbelief. It was just like, wow, like, here we came and we actually did it. So it’s awesome. I think another thing that came from it is we just build that confidence. I think last year it was tough on us because we went back to back overtime games and we lost both of them..

But now we’re seeing that even when we’re not performing to our standards on all three phases of the team, each phase stepped up at a certain time and put is in a position to win even with that little extra quarter we played. As much as you don’t want to be in that situation, it did do loads for our confidence.” – Defensive end Trey Schuman on winning in overtime

“At some point, I just realized it was bigger than me. We all came here to play football and win games. When we were trending in a bad direction early in my time here at Rice, I just wanted to find ways that I could impact the team off the field. And that just grew with working on our bonds and working on what we can do outside of football to get closer so that when we’re on the field we can just play lights out every play for each other.” – Running back Juma Otoviano on the team’s mentality

Depth Chart

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Depth Chart Notes

Rice football did not release a depth chart prior to the FAU game, so this week’s updates account for two games’ worth of changes. First on offense, Tyson Thompson, who’s been out for several weeks with an injury, was replaced by Kobie Campbell as the Owls’ fourth wide receiver. Peyton Stevenson also saw his named added to the depth chart for the first time, as he’s been running in front of Rawson McNeil in the backup X role.

The offensive line is the same as it was deployed last week, although officially slightly altered from the FAU game. At running back, Juma Otoviano has jumped into the mix, and will most likely see an enlarged role this week (stay tuned for this week’s practice notes for me on that front, available to our subscribers).

On defense, there were no official changes. The depth chart is a mirror image of that version which the Owls announced prior to the FAU game.

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