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Rice Baseball: What’s next for Roel Garcia?

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Roel Garcia has the best arm on the Rice baseball pitching staff, but whether or not he ever pitches again for the Owls remains an unanswered question.

Rice baseball head coach Matt Bragga has coached many talented pitchers over his 20+ year coaching career. In terms of raw ability, few measure up to Owls’ hurler Roel Garcia.

Garcia had the best stuff on the Rice staff in 2020. The righty is unquestionably among, if not atop, the list of the best arms Bragga has ever worked with. That’s part of what makes the joint tenure of Garcia and Bragga at Rice disappointing. A player who had the potential to be the staff ace could leave south main without ever throwing a pitch for Bragga at Reckling Park.

An injury wiped out all of Garcia’s 2019 campaign. His recovery process bled into 2020, where he was expected to ease into a spot in the Rice weekend rotation. He threw two innings in a road start at UC Irvine, striking out three and allowing no runs. After the start, he was promptly shut down.

It’s possible he could have returned at the tail end of the season, but the chances of him becoming a weekend staple came to a screeching halt in February. A month later, the season was suspended, putting the end to any chance of Garcia pitching for Rice in 2020. The question hanging in the air is this: has Garcia’s Rice baseball career come to an end?

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There are several factors impacting where Garcia ends up in 2021. Health is first and foremost. If Garcia can get back to his usual self, his opportunities will increase significantly.

Then comes the MLB Draft, which will reportedly be shortened to as few as five rounds and pushed back to July. Even hurt, Garcia stands a decent chance to be selected. He was a 27th round pick last year without throwing a pitch. With the draft being trimmed significantly, the odds of Garcia elevating himself to that level seem less likely, but not impossible.

Should Garcia return, the NCAA’s proposed eligibility changes would make him a junior again. That would give him leverage in the 2021 draft, with the ability to return for another collegiate season in 2022.

Bragga has been an adamant supporter of Garciasince he arrived at Rice. “I want what’s best for Roel,” Bragga said, speaking of the junior’s uncertain future. There’s a real chance the Owls’ won’t see Garcia on the mound in Houston ever again. Or he could be their No. 1 for the next two seasons. There’s so much in the air right now.

No matter how things play out, Garcia’s talent and personality have made an impact on his teammates and the program. For now, we (and Garcia) just have to wait.

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Rice Baseball: New faces give hope through tenuous season

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It’s never too early for Rice baseball to start looking toward the future. The Owls have young talent on both sides of the diamond set to return in 2021.

Every Rice baseball player will be eligible for an additional year of eligibility thanks to a recent NCAA ruling. That’s good news for the Owls’ seniors, but regardless of who returns and who doesn’t, Rice has plenty of young talent waiting in the wings.

On the mound

The Rice baseball weekend rotation was going to look different in 2020. It seemed like the losses of Matt Canterino and Evan Kravetz would thrust the relatively untested arms behind them into the brightest spotlights of their young careers. JUCO transfer Alex DeLeon seemed to be the easy name to pencil into Friday nights, but with Roel Garcia and Dalton Wood both recovering from injuries, the rest of the rotation was up in the air.

Coach Matt Bragga had a very different read on the situation. He knew the Sunday job was going to be a work-in-progress, but he never wavered on his Saturday selection: sophomore hurler Blake Brogdon.

Brogdon through 1.1 innings as a freshman, ending the year with an eye-popping (and not in a good way) 27.00 ERA. The idea of him being the No. 2 to start the season was puzzling, albeit not impossible. Rice really didn’t have any alternatives who were both healthy and clear improvements. So Brogdon was the guy. And he was excellent.

Brogdon was arguably the best in his four turns through the rotation. Bragga cited “his poise, his determination, and work ethic” as drivers for his massive year-over-year improvement. He went at least five innings, allowing three or fewer runs against Texas, UC Irvine and Missouri State. His outing against Texas Tech was shorter (3.2 IP) but he only allowed one run.

Drake Greenwood, who had emerged as the Sunday starter, also had an impressive run. He led all Rice pitchers with a 3.94 ERA in four appearances, with three starts. His 16 strikeouts trailed only Brogdon’s 18. Greenwood’s 1.77 strikeout-t0-walk ratio was superb.

And then there was Brandon Deskins, who outside of a rough inning against Texas State was near lights out when he was on the bump. Deskins was one Bragga named as someone who had “made a big jump” in this abridged season.

At the plate

The bulk of the Rice baseball lineup was steered by upperclassmen. That left only a few rotational spots, mostly in the outfield and at DH, to be exchanged from day to day.

Newcomer Austin Bulman proved to be a mainstay in the Rice lineup, producing six multi-hit games. He was one of three hitters to appear in all 16 contests this season. He brought some power to a lineup that was more doubles-bent than one that aimed for the fences. Bulman’s two home runs represented a quarter of the Owls’ eight long balls on the season.

Daniel Hernandez went two-for-three on opening day but managed two hits in his next 21 plate appearances. Reserve catchers Eric Benitez and Cullen Hannigan both faired well in limited action from the batter’s box, going 1-for-2 and 2-for-6, respectively.

The most puzzling fizzled bat belonged to freshman Tyler LaRue, who earned the start at DH on Opening Day. LaRue had a hot bat throughout the fall but went 3-for-21 this season. Bragga doubled-down on LaRue’s ability. “I will go to my grave some day saying this kid is going to hit at an elite level,” the coach said about the young hitter. Bragga then recalled the 1-for-9 start of his college career.

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Rice Basketball 2020: Transfers plunge promising offseason into uncertainty

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Rice basketball finds itself in a challenging position after losing three players to the Transfer Portal in the span of one week.

The sports news cycle hasn’t slowed down. Even though it’s been more than two weeks since sports of any kind were played, the news has continued to rise to the surface. Not all of it has been positive for Rice basketball.

On Friday, senior Josh Parrish announced he was transferring from the program. Sophomore Trey Murphy followed on Saturday. The dam broke Tuesday when fellow sophomore Drew Peterson also put his name into the Transfer Portal. In the span of less than a week, a promising offseason turned into a painfully bleak new reality.

Rice was already set to lose Ako Adams and Robert Martin to graduation this offseason. Now they’ll have to replace their top-five leading scorers. Absent those five, guard Chris Mullins is the only remaining player on the roster who started more than seven games last season. He averaged 7.3 points.

Murphy said “it was just time for a different opportunity”. Multiple sources have confirmed his suitor list will be vast. The talented shooter has been contacted by Arkansas, Arizona, Arizona State, Cincinnati, DePaul, Iowa State, Stanford, Texas, Wichita State, and Xavier. The allure of playing at the Power 5 level is clear.

More: Erica Ogwumike talks end of season, Rice career on The Roost Podcast

Peterson’s decision was not made in a vacuum. He called his choice to enter the transfer portal “in part, reactionary to [Murphy’s decision]. He added that he loved coach Pera, but it was “time for a new chapter” and that it was a “really hard decision.” Interest in services is heating up quickly. In the days since his announcement, he’s been contacted by Virginia Tech, Stanford, Minnesota, Cincinnati and Creighton, among others.

Roughly two weeks ago I spoke with Owls’ head coach Scott Pera. We had a great conversation, leading to a series of articles on the team and the future he’s trying to build at South Main. “It’s a process, it’s a growth, it’s a vision that now is really, really exciting. We enter Year 4 with this group coming back,” Pera said then. A lot has changed since and that core could be back to square one by the fall.

Pera issued this statement following the transfers:

I’m sorry to see the guys leave. I wish them the best. I’m going to continue to try to find the right guys for Rice, this program and this University as long as I am the head coach.

These losses will hamstring a program that had improved in the win column in every season under Pera. There’s hope for the future, anchored in two successive promising recruiting classes, but the near term just got unequivocally harder.

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Rice Baseball 2020: Gleanings from one quarter season

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Rice baseball is still working to come to terms with a disheartening 2020 season. What hope can be gathered from the Owls’ 2-14 start?

Baseball is, by its very nature, a forgiving sport. Hitters who manage one hit in three trips to the plate are lauded. Pitchers need only get through two-thirds of a game with three runs or fewer to be awarded a “quality start”. All of the stats and measures are accrued over months. That allows for outliers and streaks (both good and bad) to be accounted for. For better or worse, sample sizes are large. Not for Rice baseball in 2020.

The Owls’ season ended with a discouraging 2-14 record. Four weeks after a Valentine’s Day battle with in-state power Texas, Rice has one series win to show for their efforts and many excruciating losses. Rice led second-ranked Texas Tech by four runs twice in their final weekend, but found a way to lose both games. They were bludgeoned at home by Louisiana and swept on the road by UC Irvine.

Outside of a two-of-three series win over Missouri State, there wasn’t much positive in the box scores for Rice in their abbreviated 2020 campaign.

The finality of that gut-wrenching resume is what bothers Rice baseball head coach Matt Bragga the most. “It isn’t how you start, it’s how you finish,” said the second-year skipper. “Now obviously we want to start hot finish hot. That’s what we’re working towards. But right now all we have is a start. We didn’t get the opportunity to finish.”

If Rice proved anything in their first year under Bragga, it was that ability to finish. Some of the Owls’ best baseball transpired in the second half of the season. From March 29th on, Rice swept Old Dominion, Middle Tennessee and Louisiana Tech. They also took two of three from Southern Miss.

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In May they clinched the Silver Glove and won two games in the Conference USA Tournament. The same team that committed eight errors in a February game against Arizona left Biloxi with the best fielding percentage of any team in the conference tournament.

Last season provides no prescriptive effect as to how the 2020 campaign would have gone. But robbing this team of the opportunity to test their resiliency — although the right decision, considering the circumstances — still stings. “This was a club that had a chance to finish pretty darn strong,” remarked Bragga. Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure.

A brutal schedule, combined with injuries to Roel Garcia, Dalton Wood and Jack Conlon, pushed the already thin pitching staff beyond their capabilities. Good starts were spoiled by an overmatched bullpen. Excellent outings on the mound were wasted by a lineup that could not get the clutch hit, no matter how hard they tried. In all actuality, this was as close to the worst-scenario for the 2020 Rice baseball season as could have been possibly imagined.

Rice was able to show tangible year-over-year improvement with their gloves. Rice was ninth in C-USA with a .965 fielding percentage last season. They improved to sixth this year, fielding at a .969 clip, a hair under Bragga’s self-imposed goal of .970. A 5-error outing against Louisiana was the only truly awful defensive game they played in their 16 contests.

The hitting and the pitching objectively got worse. Injuries and the losses of Matt Canterino and Evan Kravetz hurt the Owls significantly on the mound. The bats weren’t nearly consistent enough.

Bragga hopes to turn that negative into a positive when that small sample size is expanded in 2021. “This team was way better than 2-14,” he said knowingly.

He could be onto something. Simple regression to the mean, a few more bounces in the Owls’ favor in their next 16 games could paint a very different picture. That’s especially true if Rice retains and rejuvenates their injured pitchers and adds what Bragga believes could be the most talented signing class he’s ever constructed.

“As much as it’s overused, it is a process,” Bragga admitted. If we learned anything in 2020, the Owls are closer to square one than the finished product. That’s okay, but it also means there’s plenty more work to do.

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NCAA D1 Council votes for extra year of eligibility for spring-sports

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The NCAA D1 Council voted in favor of an extra year of eligibility for all spring-sport athletes. Several Rice athletes will get back a season of eligibility.

The biggest story surrounding the future of Rice baseball centered on what would become of the current squad. Suspended roughly a quarter of the way into the 2020 season, the Owls awaited the verdict of the NCAA D1 Council.

Proposals had been thrown around over the last several weeks. The big question was what changes, if any, would be made to ensure the “appropriate” level of relief was granted to spring sport athletes. Now it’s official. The NCAA D1 Council has voted to award an extra year of eligibility to all spring-sport athletes.

https://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/1244754555591688192

Reports cite a letter written by student-athletes to the NCAA as a contributing factor toward the positive decision.

At South Main, this ruling will presumably have a direct impact on Rice Baseball, Tennis, Golf, Swimming and Track and Field. How it will play out in the coming weeks is less certain.

A key piece in the ruling was the financial burden of these added scholarships. Per a report by The Athletic, schools will have the ability to decide on the level of financial commitment on a per athlete basis. No decision has been reached on how that ruling will be applied at Rice.

At the extreme, that could play out as partial or no scholarship support to players who currently hold full scholarships. The NCAA says the Student Assitance Fund may be used to cover the cost of these scholarships.

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Spring sports operate under much different scholarship requirements than their fall counterparts. The one-athlete to one-scholarship ratio is much less cut and dry in the spring compared to sports like football and basketball.

More details like how these players will be counted regarding roster limitations will be forthcoming. Today, the big decision was made. No Rice baseball player will lose their season. It’s possible the Owls still lose players like Trei Cruz to the draft, but those who want to return will have a spot. The NCAA did the right thing. Read the full release here.

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