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The Roost Podcast | Ep. 24 – Evan Kravetz and Clifton Douglass

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Former Rice baseball pitcher Evan Kravetz and Conference USA Assitant Commissioner Clifton Douglass join us on the Roost Podcast this week.

There’s a lot going on in Conference USA. Baseball season is in its early days as the basketball seasons begin to wind down toward the conference tournament. In the midst of everything going on, we had the chance to sit down and chat with some folks plugged into both Conference USA and Rice baseball.

Former Owls’ pitcher Evan Kravetz joined us to talk about Rice on the diamond. Current Conference USA Assitant Commissioner Clifton Douglass came on the show to talk about the basketball season and more.

You can always find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, Give a listen to Episode 24.

Episode 24 Notes

  • Housekeeping — Get notifications when new shows are posted and other updates by turning on push notifications when you follow The Roost Podcast on Twitter.
  • Evan Kravetz — Making his first appearance on the show, Kravetz caught Rice fans up on what his last year has been like since he was selected by the Cincinnati Reds in the MLB Draft. He told us all about minor league life, his perfect 0.00 ERA from his debut season in pro ball. Then he gave a few names to watch on the current Rice baseball roster.
  • Clifton Douglass —  Another first time guest, Douglass walked through the decision making process that led Conference USA to institute bonus play. Does he think it has had the intended results? We also hit on the conference tournament at The Star in Frisco and the success on the court by Rice women’s basketball, the North Texas men and more.

Where can you find us?

Download and subscribe to The Roost Podcast on any of your favorite podcast providers. The show is available on iTunes, GooglePlay, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and PodBean. Please consider leaving a review wherever you listen.

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Rice Baseball 2020: Previewing the Missouri State series

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Rice baseball returns home to face Missouri State. The Owls are seeking their first series win of the season. Here’s how both teams stack up.

Rice baseball knew their nonconference schedule was far from a cakewalk before the 2020 season began. Two weeks into action, the Owls sit at 0-7 with series losses to two good, but maybe not great teams in Texas and UC Irvine. This weekend’s series against a beatable Missouri State squad has become all the more important with Omaha regular Texas Tech still on deck.

Game Notes

Times: Friday 6:30 p.m. | Saturday 2:00 p.m. | Sunday 1:00 p.m.
Venue: Reckling Park
Radio: Stretch Internet Portal
TV: CUSATV

How each team fared this week

Rice baseball (0-6) was swept by UC Irvine in a weekend series. The Owls faced Texas State in their midweek game, falling on the road by a score of 9-2.

Missouri State (4-4) went 1-3 in the Turface Classic last weekend. They beat Austin Peay on Thursday. They then lost games to Belmont, Lipscomb and Middle Tennessee to finish the weekend. They beat Oral Roberts on Tuesday by a score of 6-3.

Projected Pitching Matchups

Friday | Roel Garcia (0-0, 0.00) vs Logan Wiley (1-0, 0.00)
Saturday |Blake Brogdon (0-2, 4.22) vs Hayden Minton (1-1, 3.27)
Sunday | Drake Greenwood (0-1, 5.68)  vs Peyton Carson (0-2, 9.00)

Missouri State Pitching

Missouri State has sent 10 different pitchers to the mound over the course of their eight games played in 2020. Eight of them have a season ERA of 3.00 or better. Four of them have perfect ERAs of 0.00 including staff ace Logan Wiley. He’s thrown 15 innings of shutout ball, allowing eight hits and two walks while striking out 14.

From the pen, Forrest Barnes and Trey Ziegenbein have emerged as the go-to guys. Ziegenbein is the only reliever on the squad to throw more than seven innings and owns a K/9 rate of 9.000.

Missouri State Hitting

Grant Wood has been on a tear to start the season. He leads the team with a .367 batting average, including a team-best three extra base hits. His OPS sits at a crisp .962. Greg Ziegler is just behind him with a .300 average.

This lineup as a whole is not geared toward explosiveness. The Bears have hit eight doubles this season in eight games and only have three regulars hitting better than .250.

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Rice Baseball: Owls extend losing streak at Texas State

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Rice baseball fell to 0-7 on the season, dropping their first midweek contest in San Marcos to Texas State by a score of 9-2.

Texas State struck first with a solo home run in the first inning and never looked back. A three-run third inning and a three-run fifth put Rice baseball in an insurmountable hole, from which they were unable to return.

Here are three takeaways from the game.

Pitching staff remains a work in progress

Kel Bordwine’s early-season struggles opened the door for Brandon Deskins to start on Tuesday. He lasted just 2.1 innings before a two-walk, three-hit third inning chased him from the game. Bordwine came on in relief and was a bit wild, walking three batters while recording five outs.

Andrew Kane and Joshua Larzabal had the best nights out of the bullpen, maintaining their spotless 0.00 ERAs. Each should move up in the pecking order after the trio of Bordwine, Ryan Rickett and Garrett Zaskoda were all tagged with runs in their brief outings.

Still not enough clutch hits

Rice baseball picked up hits with runners in scoring position during the fifth and the sixth innings. Even getting one key hit evaded Rice all weekend against UC Irvine. More than zero is a step in the right direction, but it’s nowhere near the level Rice needs to be if they want to win games.

The problem has impacted the entire lineup. Here are the averages of the Owls’ top hitters with runners in scoring position this season.

  • Trei Cruz – .167
  • Cade Edwards – .167
  • Austin Bulman – .000
  • Bradley Gneiting – .000
  • Justin Collins – .000

On most nights, those five have represented the majority of the top five spots in your order. If they aren’t driving in runs, there won’t be any sort of consistent offense.

Much tougher than expected

Going back to March 2018, Rice baseball has dropped five straight games to in-state rival Texas State. That losing streak is only two games shy of the Owls’ current seven-game skid. Every team starts the season winless, but few teams make it to the third weekend without a single tally in the lefthand column.

Rice has shown deficiencies in the starting rotation, the bullpen and the batting order. The defense has been strong — much improved from this point last season — but there is plenty more work to be done to get this team back to where they want to be.

Up Next | Missouri State

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Conference USA Basketball: Men’s and Women’s Bracketology (Feb. 26)

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Conference USA Basketball hopes to extend its season into the NCAA Tournament. Here are the latest Bracketology projections for the men and women.

Men

13-Seed North Texas vs 4-Seed Oregon (West Region)

Pod play was meant to raise the profile of the conference, enabling the top teams to gain additional resume-building wins. We haven’t seen that ideal play out yet. As things currently stand, Conference USA looks to be a one-bid league once again.

Louisiana Tech and Western Kentucky are currently the two teams on the outside looking in. Tech owns the conference’s best record at 20-7 and sits at No. 73 in Kenpom’s ratings, two spots ahead of North Texas (No. 74th).

It’s conceivable that either North Texas or Louisiana Tech could run the rest of the table in the regular season before the other wins the conference tournament. Even then, it would take an exceedingly weak bubble to get two C-USA squads into the field this year.

Women

11-Seed Western Kentucky vs 6-Seed TCU (Fort Wayne Region)
11-Seed Old Dominion vs 6-Seed Kentucky (Greenville Region)

The women have a much better chance of getting multiple bids. Old Dominion and Western Kentucky are both projected to be in the field right now. They’ve each compiled an RPI in the Top 35, well within the range of an at-large selection should they fail to clinch an automatic bid.

Defending Conference USA Basketball Tournament Champion Rice is tied with Old Dominion atop the standings. Rice doesn’t have the resume to get in without winning the tournament, whereas both Old Dominion and Western Kentucky could secure a spot with a few more wins down the stretch.

It’s more likely the women get three teams into the NCAA Tournament than it is for the men to get two representatives. The Rice women would have to win the tournament with some bubble help for the other squads, but it’s starting to look like more of a legitimate possibility than anyone might have thought a few months ago.

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Rice Football 2020: Spring Practice Day 1 Notes

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The first day of Rice football spring practice is in the books. It’s too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but the groundwork is being laid for the fall.

A full complement of players took the field on Monday for the first day of Rice football spring practice. The complete roster lists 79 players, more than enough to field two full units on both sides of the ball. Some positions will be deeper than others, but the Owls have reached enough bodies to make significant strides this spring.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren likes where the team is at entering the spring, particularly on defense. “I love where our defense is…” he said. “I love that coach [Brian] Smith has them in the mindset that nothing they did last year is going to make a single play for them this year. Everything’s got to be earned again. I can’t wait to see what they can build over there on that side [of the ball]”.

Bloomgren did make sure to mention that the Owls return 20 of 22 players on the defensive two-deep depth chart. That’s the best in the nation in terms of returning defensive production.

Quarterbacks

In a somewhat surprising move, there were no “OR” designations on the first Rice football depth chart of the spring. The quarterbacks, listed from top to bottom:

  1. JoVoni Johnson
  2. Mike Collins
  3. TJ McMahon
  4. Wiley Green
  5. Evan Marshman
  6. Parker Towns

A true No. 1 is far from being finalized, but the decision to put Johnson atop the pack was intentional. “He gained a lot of our trust,” Bloomgren said. “He earned the right, in my opinion, and coach [Jerry] Mack’s opinion, to be on top. So he’s taking those [first team] reps.”

After Johnson, Collins and McMahon have clearly separated themselves from the rest of the group. It would be surprising if one of those three isn’t named the opening day starter for the Owls in the fall. The value of having Mack in the quarterback room as well as having all three starting options on campus for the full duration of spring cannot be understated.

Offensive line

Bloomgren spent the majority of the first practice in the trenches with the offensive line. Injecting his extensive experience into that group will be crucial as the Owls look to reconfigure their front five on the fly.

Rice loses Brian Chaffin, Justin Gooseberry and Nick Leverett. The first reps of spring ball featured this revamped first team line:

LT – Clay Servin
LG – Adam Sheriff
C – Isaac Klarkowski
RG – Shea Baker
RT – Jovaun Woolford

Baker at the guard position probably says more about the uncertainty at that spot than it does about the center position. Klarkowski’s work last season in emergency duty had staying power. “I don’t know if we think of him as a walk-on anymore,” admitted Bloomgren, who showed no qualms about him starting the spring with the first team.

Rice has two full lines this spring as opposed to six or seven healthy bodies at the position at this time last year. The tackle spots seem more or less locked down, but the remaining options on the interior could position themselves for a bigger role in the fall with a good showing over the next few weeks.

Injuries

It seems like having 100 percent of the roster fully healthy at the same time is all but impossible. The Owls are relatively healthy, but these four players are expected to miss all of spring ball.

  • Robbie Blosser
  • Jake Bailey
  • Bennett Mecom
  • Trey Schuman

The absence of Jake Bailey is probably the most notable. Trey Schuman is in line to regain his starting role in the fall. He’s somewhat of a more known quantity. Bailey’s absence from the spring will make things a bit more complicated in a wide receiver room that’s starting to get a little more crowded.

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