The source for Rice sports news

Rice Football: Bowl hopes dashed as WKU overwhelms Owls

By

An important game got away from Rice Football quickly as Western Kentucky poured on the points to officially eliminate Rice from bowl eligibility.

Just about any Rice football fan would have happily accepted a one-score game against Western Kentucky after the first quarter. That’s exactly where the Owls found themselves in this one, even possessing the ball at midfield as the clock started to run on the second period. Then the bottom seemingly fell out.

Mistakes, turnovers and errant passes saw a close game turn into a blowout with remarkable speed. By the time the clock hit zeroes and both teams headed back to their locker rooms for halftime, the deficit had reached 28 points, with the Hilltoppers blanking the home team. The second half seemed like a formality at that point, with Western Kentucky coasting to the win. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

Making (and losing) their own luck

At the risk of oversimplifying what has been a very sporadic season, the first 12 minutes of the Owls’ game against Western Kentucky felt like a decent synopsis. Western Kentucky moved down the field almost effortlessly, gliding into the redzone for what looked might be the opening score.

Then a bad snap and questionable decision by Bailey Zappe opened the door for Naeem Smith to step in front of a low pass and for a turnover. Given an opportunity to take the lead, the Rice offense marched down the field into the redzone on a long drive that burned more than six minutes off the clock.

The August Pitre fumbled what would have been a first down reception inside the five-yard line and WKU took over. The Hilltoppers drove 97-yards for their first touchdown on the subsequent possession.

The Roost Podcast: Stay tuned for the game recap this week – Rice football vs WKU 

Rice made a big play. They had a golden opportunity to tilt the game into their favor and executed extremely well for a meaningful duration. Then, when it looked like Rice football might have set themselves up for success, disaster struck.

From “oh no!” to “yes!” to “oh no!” all in the span of three relatively short drives. A potential 7-0 Rice lead flipped to a 7-0 Rice deficit in a matter of minutes. And Rice made good plays on both sides of the ball to get them close. To start the second quarter the Rice defense forced a three-and-out. Not long after Rice punter Charlie Mendes misfired for a net of 14 yards. One step forward, another step back.

Unforced errors are stacking up

The special teams woes have been just as surprising as the defensive regression. Every week there’s an unflattering moment (or two, or three) to write home about for a unit that was among the most efficient in the country in the early years of Bloomgren’s tenure. The Rice special teams unit ranked 124th out of 130 teams in terms of efficiency entering the WKU contest.

Against the Hilltoppers, the Owls kicked the aforementioned 14-yard punt. They delivered a low snap on another punt attempt that resulted in a hurried, 32-yard punt. The first punt of the third quarter netted just 25 yards.

Rice also had a punt returned muffed, but were fortunate to recover that one with the return man quickly falling on the loose ball.

Add in four fumbles (one lost), four interceptions and eight penalties for 80 yards and you get a recipe for losing football games. Even when your defense is able to force four turnovers to help lighten the load.

Imperfect offensive evolution

Although it might have been missed in the series of close games Rice has played in recent weeks and the blowout at the hands of Western Kentucky, the Rice offense has taken a meaningful step forward. Against Charlotte, Rice recorded the highest yardage total (468 yards) they’d managed against an FBS opponent under Bloomgren. The play was sloppy against WKU, but the Owls did move the ball.

During this recent stretch, Rice had mixed running and passing and has proven effective on both fronts. Ari Broussard has been a revelation on the ground, but for every long, bruising run he delivers, the offense has also spread out in a five-wide formation and trusted quarterback Jake Constantine to find the open man.

It’s entirely possible Rice has run more plays with empty backfields in the past three weeks than they ran in the previous three seasons combined.

With no Bradley Rozner or Jordan Myers (a late scratch) on the field, Rice got down the field. Costly turnovers and errant throws from Constantine were the limiting factors for Rice against WKU, but the scheme itself was productive.

Broussard ran for 60 yards on 15 carries. Constantine passed for 380 yards and one touchdown. This offense has an identity — they finished with 504 total yards against Western Kentucky — but they’re not playing clean. And they’re running out of time.

Officially missed the mark

Reaching the postseason was the unquestioned expectation for Rice football this year. They will not get there. The Owls’ seventh loss of the season on Saturday ensured they will be staying home for the holidays once more. On that front, this season is a disappointment.

Bloomgren will undoubtedly have to answer for the shortcomings, and he has largely owned the missteps to this point. His team did not reach the expectations they set out to achieve and he, the coaching staff, and these players were noticeably frustrated by the overtime losses and missed opportunities along the way, as they should be.

Now what? Rice football has two games remaining on its 2021 slate: at UTEP and home vs Louisiana Tech. Should the Owls win both games, they’d finish with a 5-7 record and a .417 winning percentage, still the highest any Rice team has reached since 2014. Even winning one of the final pair would represent the most victories in a single season since the 2015 squad went 5-7. To that end, there is something to play for.

Digging deeper

Every week we’ll have a stat, storyline or key learning from the game reserved for our subscribers.

Secondary sinking

Sorry! This part of content is hidden behind this box because it requires a higher contribution level ($10) at Patreon. Why not take this chance to increase your contribution?
Subscribe on Patreon for exclusive Rice football recruiting updates, practice notes and more.

Recent Posts

Rice Basketball: Owls shut down by stifling Houston defense

By

After an impressive opening win, Rice basketball fell back to earth as Hoston cooled the Owls’ offense and handed Rice its first loss of the season.

If there was any remaining early-season rust, the Houston Cougars didn’t show it in their meeting with Rice basketball on Friday night at the Fertitta Center. The Coogs’ defense was suffocating early, holding a typically explosive Rice offense to just five points through the first 12 minutes of play. Rice was without Chris Mullins and Quincy Olivari was limited. But no matter who was on the court, the shots just weren’t falling.

Carl Pierre opened the scoring with a dunk. 2-0 Rice. From that point onward, Rice would make one of its next 14 shots. It wasn’t just an off night for the Owls’ offense, they couldn’t find open looks anywhere. In the seconds leading up to a triple from Jake Lieppert with 6:58 to play before halftime, the Houston lead had ballooned to 17 points.

“The knockout was early,” Pera said, point-blank.

Worn down from too many fruitless trips up the court, the Rice defense which held tough early, started to slip. By the time the halftime buzzer blared across the sea of red-clad fans, Rice trailed 44-15. That was all she wrote.

“They pretty much did they wanted all night,” Pera said. “We didn’t have much resistance and we didn’t have much attack on offense to get what we wanted.”

Entering this contest, the lowest scoring output for a Pera-coached Rice basketball team was 41 points in a losing effort against FAU on Feb. 16, 2019. Just how anomalous is that? Rice has failed to reach 50 points just three times under Pera, once each in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 seasons. Conversely, the Owls had topped 90 points 10 times over that stretch.

More: Rice Basketball Season Preview

Every team has its off nights, but this rough outing was magnified by a superb outing against one of the nation’s top teams. If the Pepperdine win was a solid launching point, this was the crash landing not long after. The reality of how good this team can and will be is most likely somewhere in between.

Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson offered a similar sentiment as he closed out his own postgame remarks. “That team could make the tournament,” he said of the Hofstra team that took Houston to overtime three nights prior, “I don’t know if they will or not, but they’re good.” Then came the twist. “Rice is probably a little better than Hofstra, but we were better tonight.”

Where does Rice fit in the mix between Houston and Hofstra? That’s what we’re going to find out over the course of the next several weeks and months. On Friday, the reality was this: whether expected or not, Rice wasn’t very close to a team coming off a trip to the Final Four.

Player Spotlight | Max Fielder

The box score might not fully reflect it, but Max Fiedler acquitted himself well for much of the game against Houston. He disrupted shooting lanes on the defensive side of the court, forcing Houston into difficult angles or bypassing the lane altogether in favor of an outside shot. On a night where Rice wasn’t securing anything that bounced off either rim, Fiedler was strong off the glass. In 22 minutes, he finished second among all players with seven rebounds.

Final Box | Houston 79 – Rice 46

Up Next | Full Schedule

Rice basketball returns home on Tuesday, November 16 to host Southern. That will be the Owls’ last home game for two weeks. They visit New Orleans on Friday, November 19 before heading to Florida to play in the Gulf Coast Showcase the following week.

Photo credit Maria Lysaker
Subscribe on Patreon for exclusive Rice football recruiting updates, practice notes and more.

Recent Posts

Rice Football 2021: WKU presser quotes, updates and depth chart

By

Rice football knows what’s at stake this week against Western Kentucky. Here’s what Mike Bloomgren had to say about the matchup, updates and depth chart notes.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren and a pair of players met with the media for their customary weekly availability. They discussed the tough loss to Charlotte and laid out expectations and their prep work for their game against Western Kentucky next week. We’ll include updates from Bloomgren and those players, then dig further into the details of the Rice football depth chart and what the team looks like on the field headed into the weekend.

Subscriber content.<br /> Please login to see the full post or visit our Patreon page.

Rice football has found stability at the quarterback position after injuries and lineup adjustments. With that settled and no major injury updates looming, the lineup is starting to normalize. First, the quotes:

Press Conference Quotes

“I think for three and two-thirds quarters, we played about as well as we needed to. We certainly left some opportunities out there like you always do. We played good enough to win and we weren’t able to capitalize down the stretch and that’s really disappointing.” – Mike Bloomgren on the Charlotte loss

“We know [Western Kentucky] have a dominant offense. They have a great quarterback and they have been playing as good a defense as they have all year. They’re creating turnovers. They’re really playing solid in all three phases. They’re really good on special teams. They get after it on special teams. So, it’s going to be an unbelievable challenge for us.” – Mike Bloomgren on the Western Kentucky game

“I really think the past few weeks, it’s just been getting the five dudes together, gelling more as these five guys. And then also, it’s just a testament to our coaching. We’ve talked about it before. We have probably five or six elite level offensive line coaches just in this building. We’re really a product of our training when it comes to our coaching. And every week that we’ve gotten better, I would say as part of it is every week, our coaches have worked harder. So I think that’s a big testament to some of our recent successes.” – Guard Cole Garcia on the growth of the offensive line

“They’re going to throw the ball a lot. So we got to get back there. And [defensive line] coach [Cedric] Calhoun always says ‘put it on us’. The d-line is going to always give 100 percent effort and try and get some pressure on the QB to help on our DBs.” – Defensive end Miles Adams on Western Kentucky

Depth Chart

There are no changes to the official Rice football depth chart this week.

Rice Football

Secondary is on notice

Sorry! This part of content is hidden behind this box because it requires a higher contribution level ($10) at Patreon. Why not take this chance to increase your contribution?
Subscribe on Patreon for exclusive Rice football recruiting updates, practice notes and more.

Recent Posts

Rice Basketball: Stout defense propels Owls past Pepperdine

By

A stout defensive performance propelled Rice basketball over Pepperdine in decisive fashion to lift the Owls’ to 1-0 on their young season.

There wasn’t much about the early goings of the Rice basketball season opener against Pepperdine that seemed unusual. The Owls hit the first shot of the game, a triple from Carl Pierre, then knocked down two more threes in what appeared to be the beginnings of a back-and-forth game the likes of which had been played at Tudor Fieldhouse time and time again

In those games, Rice would shoot the lights out and try as hard as they could to muster enough stops on defense to hang on. Things seemed to be trending towards those same ‘ol Owls on Tuesday night, right up until the halftime buzzer. Then something shifted.

More: Rice Basketball Season Preview

With Chris Mullins — who head coach Scott Pera point-blank referred to as the team’s best defensive player — sidelined with a finger injury suffered early in the game, the Rice defense clamped down. The Owls allowed seven points in the first 10 minutes of the second half, rattling off a 28-7 run which turned a close game into a rout. They didn’t ease up much at all the rest of the way, limiting Pepperdine to a pedestrian 35.4 percent shooting from the field.

“We defended. We defended for 40 minutes and that was the difference,” Pera said emphatically after the game.

That refrain matches the chorus sung by Pera and his players last week during preseason media availability. Back at that time this team made it crystal clear they’d’ been exerting the majority of their efforts on getting better on that side of the court. Against Pepperdine, that attention to detail showed.

Again, Pera echoed “[Defense is] certainly the emphasis. Things become important when it’s on the front of your mind, and it’s on the front of our guys’ minds, it’s been since June.” And now, Rice has taken those ideas and made them a reality.

Rice shot 35.5 percent from three against Pepperdine. Preseason All-Conference honoree Quincy Olivari did not make any of his three attempts, battling through a wrist injury. It was a fine night from distance, but not one that this “Green Light U” squad is going to write home about. This is a team that can and has shot 40 percent, even 45 or 50 percent from three.

But even on a mediocre shooting night from three, this iteration of Rice basketball won by 19 points. When asked what this team might be capable of on a good shooting night from distance, Pera couldn’t suppress a grin, before letting out this subtle promise: “When we’re healthy and we’re really cooking, we will put on a show some nights.”

Player Spotlight | Noah Hutchins

Travis Evee led all Rice scorers with 24 points and six made three-pointers, but it was a surprise 13 minutes from Noah Hutchins that proved to be particularly intriguing. Hutchins only returned to practice this past week after recovering from an injury of his own, but he was thrust into meaningful minutes when Mullins went down.

Hutchins ended with a +4 plus/minus, largely because he happened to not be on the court during much of the Owls’ decisive second-half run, but he did settle things down when he entered, helping lead the charge on some key sequences. With Mullins’ status for the Houston game unknown, Rice could lead on Hutchins more in the near future. He acquitted himself well in his debut.

Final Box | Rice 82 – Pepperdine 63

Up Next | Full Schedule

Rice basketball will hit the road for a short trip across town on Friday when they’ll visit the University of Houston to take on the Top 15 Cougars at the Fertitta Center, where they narrowly escaped an upset at the hands of Hofstra on Tuesday. Tip-off for that game is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. It will be available for streaming on ESPN+. After that, Rice returns home on Tuesday, November 16 to host Southern.

Photo credit Maria Lysaker
Subscribe on Patreon for exclusive Rice football recruiting updates, practice notes and more.

Recent Posts

Rice Women’s Basketball rolls past St. Edwards in season opener

By

Rice women’s basketball took care of business in their home opener, opening coach Lindsay Edmond’s tenure with a convincing victory.

To some extent, early season basketball games are hard to evaluate. Rice Women’s basketball opened their 2021-2022 campaign against St. Edwards, a DII school. Even with so many new pieces to work in and early-season jitters to iron out, a win was expected. Anything beyond that would have been icing on the cake.

On Tuesday night, with a crowd in the stands at Tudor Fieldhouse for the first time in more than a year, the Owls had feasted.

After trading buckets in the early moments, Rice extended a 5-4 lead to 28-4 lead before St. Edwards could score again. Freshman Malia Fisher led the way out of the gate. Fellow newcomer Alexis Stover added nine points of her own and the entire team played solid defense, the kind Rice fans have grown accustomed to over the last several years.

“Overall, the gelling is happening. It’s going to continue to happen as we go. I don’t expect it to be perfect on the first night, but I thought we looked pretty good out there for the majority of the game,” head coach Lindsay Edmonds said afterward.

More: Rice Women’s Basketball Season Preview

Team captain Katelyn Crosthwait played limited minutes in what is expected to be her last game of reduced minutes this season. Fellow captain Haylee Swayze was held out entirely. Edmonds said she could be a few more weeks away from seeing her first action.

It’s a long season and both are working to get back to 100 percent. That left extra court time available for Rice in the opener which coach Edmonds took advantage of, getting the majority of the roster meaningful playing time.

Given the various combinations of new faces, it wasn’t a perfect game by any means. This was the first time many of these players had seen the court in a live game and there were some growing pains. There was a sequence in which Rice committed a shot clock violation in the first quarter with plenty of time to work with.

There were smaller communication gaps on both sides of the court. But when you open up a 30-point margin, there’s room to work through those issues. Edmonds was quick to mention she was “obviously, a little worried about our third quarter effort” in which St. Edwards cut their deficit from 26 to 27 points, adding later that the team has “some work to do on the rebounding end, for sure.”

In totality, Rice women’s basketball netted just what they needed from this tune-up game. They won, gathered valuable time on the court and came away with a list of things to work on as the season progresses. And most importantly, they’re 1-0.

Player Spotlight | Malia Fisher

Freshman Malia Fisher was one of the positives from this game. Fisher scored or assisted on nine of the Owls’ first 11 points. She finished with nine points, six rebounds, two assists and two blocks. After starting the game a perfect 4-for-4 from the field, she did not attempt another shot from the floor, but found other ways to help the team win.

Edmonds’ noted the second-half lul and seemed confident Fisher’s consistency would come. She went on to call Fisher “a very special player, very athletic” adding that “she hasn’t even tapped into her full potential yet. She’s an exciting player that does a lot of things that make you go ‘wow’.” Consider that a ringing endorsement of one of the Owls’ newest faces.

Final Box | Rice 84 – St. Edwards 41

Up Next | Full Schedule

Rice women’s basketball opens its season with a stretch of five home games, not leaving the confines of Tudor Fieldhouse during the month of November. They’ll host Louisiana on Saturday, Nov. 13. That game tips off at 7:00 p.m.

Subscribe on Patreon for exclusive Rice football recruiting updates, practice notes and more.

Recent Posts