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Report: Rice Football expected to join the AAC

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BREAKING: Per a report by Yahoo!’s Pete Thamel, Rice football is expected to join the American Athletic Conference.

After flying almost entirely under the radar during the most recent round of realignment, Rice football and all Rice Athletics programs have found themselves in the spotlight. Per a report by Yahoo!’s Pete Thamel, the Owls are one six programs expect to apply to the American Athletic Conference, which is expected to accept all six applications.

Here’s Thamel’s report in its entirety:

“Sources: The American Athletic Conference is expected examine expansion this week, with six schools expected to send applications. The AAC is expected to receive an application from – FAU, Charlotte, North Texas, UTSA, Rice and UAB this week. The expectation is that they will be accepted and the AAC will grow to a 14-team football league. (Also 14 teams in hoops.)”

There might be smoke to this fire. The Athletic’s Chris Vannini echoed the report soon after, adding some additional color as well:

“Source confirms to The Athletic that the American Athletic Conference is expected to look at adding Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA.

Pete Thamel first reported.

Some in the AAC have wanted to go big and take Texas away from potential Mountain West expansion.”

Rice had received almost passive mentions in realignment discussions to this point. The Owls were connected to rumblings regarding the AAC late this summer and were eventually linked to the Mountain West.

If these most recent reports come to fruition—something that seems very probable, if not likely, at this point— months of wondering would come to an end and Rice would escape Conference USA. The Owls’ newfound conference might look something like this:

West: Rice, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane, Navy, North Texas, UTSA
East: USF, FAU, Temple, Memphis, UAB, Charlotte, ECU

Meanwhile, Conference USA would be left in pieces. The remaining teams would be UTEP, Louisiana Tech, Southern Miss, Western Kentucky, Marshall, FIU and Old Dominion. If the Sun Belt were to come calling, the league might very well cease to exist. Whether it was cunning or luck, or a mixture of both, Rice football might have found itself in the right place at the right time.

This is a developing story. Updates will follow.

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Rice Football 2021 Game Preview: UAB

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Rice Football looks to rebound from its first C-USA loss, but they’ll have their work cut out for them against UAB. How to watch, key stats, x-factor picks and more.

Rice football and UAB, the Owls’ upcoming opponent, could not have had more diametrically opposing weekends. The Blazers blanked a Southern Miss team Rice had just edged out at home, winning by a final score of 34-0. Meanwhile, Rice was in the middle of a shutout of their own, but the Owls were on the wrong side of the margin, falling 45-0 to UTSA.

UAB will look to keep rolling at home this weekend while Rice needs a bounce back in the worst way. Here’s what you need to know:

Kickoff time | 2:30 PM CT
Venue | Protective Stadium – Birmingham, AL
TV | ESPN+
Radio | Sports Map 94.1 (FM) / Stretch Internet (Online)

Audio / Visual Preview

We’ll preview Rice football vs UAB this week’s episode of the Blue and Gray Preview Show, streaming live on Wednesday at Noon on the Rice Athletics YouTube channel. You can also catch the recap of last week’s game on The Roost Podcast, which should be released shortly. Find us on the podcast page or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. (And consider leaving us a 5-star review while you’re at it.)

Sizing up the contenders

UAB currently sits tied atop the Conference USA West standings with UTSA and UTEP, all three of which boast sterling 3-0 records. If the start of conference play is any indication, the battle for this division might be close, making every game all the more important for each team still in the hunt.

Rice (1-1 C-USA) isn’t technically eliminated from that race, but the Owls have some issues of their own to work through before they can seriously start to consider themselves bonafide contenders. Sitting at 2-4 on the season, the Owls need to finish 4-2 down the stretch to reach bowl eligibility. That task gets decidedly harder if they don’t walk away from Birmingham this weekend with the upset.

Series History

All Time | UAB leads Rice 6-3
Last Five | UTSA leads 4-1
Last Meeting | Home 2020, UAB won 21-16

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Rice Stat Notables

Passing | Constantine – 49/66 (74.2 percent), 564 yards, 3 TD, 2 INT
Rushing | Myers – 60 carries, 264 yards (4.4 yards per carry), 5 TD
Receiving | Bailey – 23 receptions, 245 yards (10.7 yds/rec), 1 TD / Patterson – 14 receptions, 226 yards (16.1 yds/rec), 1 TD
Tackles | Montero – 45 / Smith – 37 / Garcia – 33
Pass Breakups | Smith/Dunbar – 4, Nyakwol – 3
Interceptions | Nyakwol – 2, Five others tied with one

UAB Stat Notables

Passing | Hopkins – 62/102 (60.8 percent), 973 yards passing, 10 TD, 2 INT
Rushing | McBride – 80 carries, 421 yards (5.3 yards per carry), 2 TD / Brown Jr. – 59 carries, 343 yards (5.8 yds/car), 2 TD
Receiving | Prince – 17 receptions, 357 yards (21.0 yards per reception), 6 TD / Shropshire – 12 receptions, 265 yards (22.1 yds/rec), 3 TD
Tackles | Wilder – 42 / Boler – 32 / Wright – 26
Interceptions | Swoopes – 2, Six tied with one apiece 
Pass Breakups | McWilliams – 4, Five tied with two apiece

UAB X-Factor | Make Rice earn it

UAB enters this game tied for second in the conference in 20+ yard plays allowed. They’ve given up 26 such plays across seven games, an average of 3.7 per contest. That number almost disappears when considering their conference games. In three games against North Texas, Florida Atlantic and Southern Miss the Blazers have allowed just four gains of 20+ yards, 1.3 such plays per game.

The Rice offense has struggled on third down. Poor protection put them in long downs and distances frequently last weekend against UTSA. If UAB can keep Rice behind schedule, forcing them to need long gains to stay on the field, it’s game over for the Owls who enter the weekend dead last in Conference USA with 16 plays of 20+ yards across six games.

Rice X-Factor | Start fast

For all the growing pains that have beset Rice football over the past several seasons, starting strong was never a problem for this team until now. Rice entered the UTSA game riding a 16 games streak in which they’d prevented a conference opponent from scoring on their opening drive, dating back to their meeting with UTEP in 2018.

Rice scored first in every game last season and did not allow a single first quarter point in five games. Perhaps that high of a standard was unsustainable — and it probably was — but regressing as far as they have has been much too excessive of a slide, especially considering the talent they have returning.

So, until proven otherwise, Rice absolutely must start strong if they’re going to find the motivation and confidence to play a four quarter football game. Two bad possessions on top of each other has doomed Rice in several games already this year, and the season is only six games old. For Rice, they need to do everything they can control to lead 7-0 after the first couplet of drives, even if that means pulling out every trick in the book.

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One Final Thing

Dwelling in the past never does too much to benefit the present, but there are a few glaring similarities between where Rice stands entering the UAB game and where Rice stood a year ago prior to their now lauded road tilt with No. 15 Masrhall.

Rice football had just been dealt a discouraging loss, on the road to a conference opponent they were expected to (at the very least) contender with. The Owls saw their starting quarterback get injured in that game and were already without multiple starting players on the defensive side of the ball and had been without Bradley Rozner for the season.

With not much going for them other than what the team coined “unwavering belief”, they pulled up one of the most significant upsets in the history of the program. Rice needs to get out of the business of being multi-touchdown underdogs, but if nothing else, they’ve always found a way to bounce back from their bottoming-out moments.

Rice started 0-9 in 2019 before winning three straight to close the year. They recovered from the quadruple-doink in 2020 to squash Southern Miss 30-6 on the road. And then were was the aforementioned rebound against Marshall. This team hasn’t discovered consistency whatsoever, but they have been resilient when they’ve needed it most. They need that resiliency now more than ever.

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Rice Football Recruiting: 2022 OL Miguel Cedeno commits to Owls

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The 2022 Rice Football recruiting class added a massive pickup in the offensive trenches, securing a commitment from offensive lineman Miguel Cedeno.

Just as the Owls were working through the bye week the 2022 Rice football recruiting class was working towards prolonging that success. Rice began its fall campaign with seven commitments in their upcoming class. They’ve now picked up numbers eight and nine, adding their second pledge of the week, this from American Heritage (FL) offensive lineman Miguel Cedeno.

Cedeno is the first offensive lineman in the Owls’ 2022 class. The 6-foot-7, 295-pound big man was initially offered by Rice on September 25 and made a visit to campus shortly after to see Rice take down Southern Miss. That proved to be all he needed to see, opting to shut his recruitment down a little more than a week later with these six finalists: Rice, West Virginia, Utah, Florida Atlantic, Tulane and Southern Miss.

The commitment from Cedeno gives Rice another head-to-head recruiting win over multiple Power 5 programs. It also keeps the pipeline to Florida open. Rice has signed at least one Floridian in every class since Mike Bloomgren took the helm of the program, now spanning five classes. Rice had no signees from Florida over the prior five years.

The fifth commitment on the offensive side of the ball, Cedeno will someday provide protection for quarterback commit AJ Padgett as well as wideouts Braylen Walker and Rawson MacNeill and running back Dean Connors.

Premium: Rice Football Recruiting Offer and Commitment Tracker

When you turn the tape on, it’s easy to see what the Owls saw when they made the decision to extend an offer to Cedeno. Not only does he win his one-on-one battles, he overpowers defenders in the trenches. Already a big human being, he has the chance to become even more threatening with a few years of work with strength and conditioning coach Hans Straub. He’s fairly fast on his feet for someone of that size, too. Altogether, this is a great pickup for Rice football.

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Conference USA Football 2021: Week 7 C-USA 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 7.

Team Week 7 Result Week 8
Charlotte — OFF —  — vs FAU (Thrs)
FAU — OFF —  — at Charlotte (Thrs)
FIU — OFF —  — vs WKU
LA Tech at UTEP L, 19-3 vs UTSA
Marshall at North Texas W, 49-21 — OFF —
MTSU — OFF —  — at UConn (Fri)
North Texas vs Marshall L, 49-21 vs Liberty
Old Dominion vs WKU L, 43-20 — OFF —
Rice at UTSA L, 45-0 at UAB
Southern Miss vs UAB L, 34-0 — OFF —
UAB at Southern Miss W, 34-0 vs Rice
UTEP vs Louisiana Tech W, 19-3 — OFF —
UTSA vs Rice W, 45-0 at Louisiana Tech
WKU at Old Dominion W, 43-20 at FIU

Notable Week 7 results – Standings

The cream of the crop

If we’ve learned anything from the first half of the season, we now know for certain that UTSA and UAB are the best of the West, and likely the top two teams in Conference USA. Not only did both teams find the win column this week; they blasted inferior opponents in an emphatic fashion. If you haven’t circled Nov. 20 yet, get it on your calendar. These two teams are going to put on quite a show.

Watch out for Western

Although they weren’t able to top UTSA the week prior, Western Kentucky looked quite capable on Saturday against Old Dominion. Bailey Zappe continues to be as good as advertised and Conference USA defenses don’t have any answers for the Hilltoppers’ signal-caller. This team is going to drop 40+ every game. The only way to top them is to outscore them, something that probably won’t be happening too often.

Miner Mania

UTEP was expected to be better this season, but even some of the Miners’ own supporters were skeptical of a bowl berth coming by the end of the year. Turns out, it only took seven weeks for UTEP to accomplish that feat. Not only will UTEP be bowling this offseason, they’ll enter their bye week deadlock atop Conference USA West with UTSA and UAB, all of which own 3-0 conference records.

Looking ahead – Key storylines

Intrigue in the East

If it’s not going to be Western Kentucky who emerges in the East, it might be one of Charlotte or FAU, who meet on the field next week following bye weeks for both programs. Each squad enters next week in the top half of C-USA in scoring defense and scoring offense. If they have hopes of winning their division, a win in this game would be a great place to start.

Mean Green Free Fall?

After winning their season opener against Northwestern State, North Texas has lost five consecutive games and only one of them was particularly close. The task won’t get any easier this week as they close out non-conference play against Liberty — who were upset by 32.5-point underdogs Louisiana Monroe on Saturday — but they need to show some sign of life after a rough month of play.

Tech in trouble?

Under head coach Skip Holtz, Louisiana Tech has been a perennial contender in Conference USA, and despite falling short of that elusive conference title, they’ve played in bowl games in each of the last seven seasons, winning six in a row prior to last year. Now sitting at 2-4 with UTSA on deck, the Bulldogs are in danger of getting uncomfortably close to missing that regular postseason trip they’ve become so accustomed to each winter.

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Rice Football: Mike Bloomgren reacts to UTSA loss

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Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren met with the media following his teams’ discouraging loss to UTSA. Here are his words as he discusses the game.

We’re going to do this a little bit differently this week. Oftentimes, this is the space for a postgame featurette recapping the most recent game and delving into an aspect or two that proved important or consequential in some form. This week, this column will be reserved for the words of Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren himself in his postgame comments with the media following the Owls’ 45-0 loss to UTSA. No need to dress it up. Here’s the head man himself:

Opening Statement

“Obviously not how we wanted this game to go, not how we planned for this game to go. We got taken to the woodshed. They beat us pretty good tonight. And we got outcoached and got outplayed — out-executed — it’s hard to say outplayed because I think our guys always play hard, but we had too much error in our game and made a lot of mistakes. And we paid dearly for them against a very, very good football team. We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to continue to talk about ascending as a program. I think our fans deserve better. And we’re going to work our butts off to give it to them.”

On the loss coming directly following a bye week

“I think [the bye week] allowed us to feel really good about the gameplan; that allowed us to feel like we were in a really good place. And coming off two wins, you felt like we were taking positive steps, and tonight certainly was not a positive step. I think the only thing that I would point to tonight is that I thought our guys were really into the game for each other, they were playing for each other, and they were encouraging each other throughout the whole game. I think that’s where magic starts but nothing’s fun when you get beat like that, right?

There’s encouragement. There’s fight to the end. But we have to play better. We are in this to win. Coming out of the bye, thought we’d play a lot better than we did tonight, and we didn’t really execute on defense star standard and obviously offense was really bad.”

On what needs to change regarding the slow starts

“It’s probably confidence as much as anything. We are still fragile. We are still learning how to consistently win. And we’ve got to get to the point where when something bad happens, we set our jaw and when we say like, let’s go to the next play, let’s worry about what we can actually control, which is the next play, not the ones that have already happened. I think that’s something that we got to continue to work on. We are talking about it a good bit. And until we can get our confidence, I think that’s what we got to do. We got to find a way to make our own confidence, to earn our own confidence, and that’s why you practice, that’s why you do things in practice, that’s why you try to make those things really hard. But right now, we’re not able to shift the tide.

Momentum is such a big deal in this world. And I feel like when we get momentum rolling our way, we’re pretty fun. We have a lot of fun on the field and we’re scoring points and stopping people. We got to find a way to make that momentum go our way early in games.”

On what adjustments needs to be made moving forward

“I think that we’re gonna have to let this thing hurt, and we’re gonna have to learn from these corrections that these coaches will make on Monday and we better put a great game plan together for UAB. Because it’s not like they’re not the defendant conference champs…

We’ve got to make sure we have a complete understanding of what we’re doing, give our kids the best chance, and then we have to go execute. So we got to find out what we can execute at a high enough level to beat a team in Conference USA. And that’s what we need to do on offense and defense right now, whatever we’re good enough at. If we need to simplify, we need to simplify. If we need to do more, then we need to do more, we need to get more scheme. But again, it’s really heartbreaking to me for our players because I do think they’re playing really hard, they’re just not always playing well.”

On what needs to improve on offense

“I mean, look at those numbers. Gosh, we threw for 36 yards. We’ve got to make sure that we’re catching the ball when we throw it. We’ve got to throw it to the right place. We’ve got to throw it to the open guy. There’s not going to be a lot of magic here, but we also got to protect better. That’s where it’s always going to start for us. If we can protect the passer, we believe in our guys to take a drop and find the guy that’s open. But as I said we had a couple big drops that are disappointing, but we’ve got a long way to go in the throw game that we’ve got to improve on.”

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