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Furious comeback falls short as Rice Basketball falls to SUU

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Rice basketball engineered a furious comeback, but couldn’t make the final defensive stop, falling to Southern Utah in the CBI Tournament.

Whether it was exhaustion, poor execution or just bad luck, Rice basketball started its quarterfinal round game against Southern Utah in a nine-point hole. SUU came out shooting extremely efficiently, knocking down 62 percent of their shots from the field in the first half as the Owls struggled immensely to get going.

“We just couldn’t make a shot,” head coach  Scott Pera said in dismay. “We couldn’t make a shot, other than Travis [Evee].”

It was Evee who kept Rice afloat. He scored a team-high 18 points in the first half while his teammates scored 21 combined. Rice went into the break trailing 12, in desperate need of a rally that wouldn’t come for quite a long time.

“I was hoping the run would be at the 17-minute mark or the 14-minute mark or the 9-minute mark,” Pera said.

Instead, that run came in the final minutes of the game. Trailing by 14 points with 6:30 to play, Rice started to chip away. Quincy Olivari hit some free throws then Mekhi Mason made a three to make it a nine-point game. Olivari and Max Fiedler (twice) each converted and-one opportunities, offset by a few SUU free throws to make it a six-point game. Cam Sheffield cut the deficit to three.

Then, with 24 seconds on the clock and the season on the line, Evee delivered the game-tying three. Southern Utah would drain the clock down to its final seconds then connect on the go-ahead jumper. Olivari’s long heave at the buzzer did not go and despite erasing an unthinkable deficit, the Owls’ season still ended in bitter fashion.

Final Box | SUU 81 – Rice 79

Key takeaway | Doomed by defense

A year ago, Rice basketball played in this same CBI Tournament in this same arena on this same court. Pera hasn’t forgotten because the image of last season’s CBI defeat is seared into his brain in much the same way this loss will be. After overcoming a late deficit, that time against Ohio, Rice watched the Bobcats hit the game-winner at the buzzer and end the Owls’ season.

“That’s two years in a row on the same basket,” Pera lamented.

This time around, Rice basketball doesn’t get to the final shot without several crucial defensive stops in the second half. It wasn’t all offense that fueled this comeback. That the bottom line remains the same. In back-to-back seasons Rice basketball has needed one final stop to prolong their season and they haven’t been able to do it.

More: Rice Women’s Basketball defeats BYU to advance in WNIT

In some respects, Pera is right when he credited his opponents and the player in question, Tevian Jones who ended with 30 points including that game-winner. “They made one more play. That kid made a heck of a shot,” Pera said. But the Owls are still going home.

If Rice basketball wants to be a championship-caliber program, they have to get drastically better on defense. They’ve proven time and time again they can find good shooters. They’ve proven they have the mental capacity to climb out of unthinkable holes. But they haven’t consistently been able to get the most important stop when their season depends on it. And now they’re going home.

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Rice Basketball upsets Duquesne to advance in 2023 CBI Tournament

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Rice basketball survived a three-point barrage by Duquesne and defeated the Dukes, moving on to the second round of the CBI Tournament.

A 12-Seed in the 2023 CBI Tournament, Rice basketball certainly didn’t play like an underdog in Daytona Beach on Sunday afternoon. After trading minor leads in the early portions of the first half, Rice combined a furious scoring assault with a stingy defensive stretch to go on an 18-2 run and take a 13-point lead over the Duquesne Dukes.

Duquesne didn’t stay down long, thundering back via a three-point assault. As Rice found success inside (dominating Duqeuense in the paint 46-18), Duquense knocked down 14 threes but did not hit a three for a span of almost 10 minutes of play, hampering their attempts at a comeback.

As has often been the case for Rice basketball this season, Travis Evee and Quincy Olivari led the way. After failing to score any points in the first half, Olivari came alive in the second, scoring a game-high 19 second-half points and propelling Rice to a late lead.

When asked what sparked Olivari’s key second-half resurgence, head coach Scott Pera credited Olivari’s maturity and poise. “I’ve coached him for four years,” he said. “Sometimes you say something to him and get on him and sometimes you say nothing because he knows… and he knew. And he was ready to go in the second half.”

The battle raged on that way until the final minutes when Andrew Akuchie hit a layup and Mekhi Mason followed that score immediately with a steal and two free throws. That put Rice up by 11 with 1:25 to play. Duquesne hit a few more threes from that point but was unable to dig out of the hole as Rice was able to survive and advance to the next round.

“It’s just another barrier we knocked down,” Pera said of the win. “[It’s] another step for the program and I’m just really proud of the guys.”

Final Box | Rice 84 – Duquesne 78

Key takeaway | Making the good times count

Consistency hasn’t been the hallmark of Rice basketball this season, but the Owls have certainly been explosive. In this game, Rice went on runs of 11-0, 7-0, 6-0 and 5-0 (twice), leading by as many as 13 points toward the end of the first half. With those highs, though, came the lows. Rice allowed runs of 10-0 and 8-0, both in the first half.

More: Rice Women’s Basketball defeats BYU to advance in WNIT

Eliminating the lapses on defense isn’t going to happen at this point in the season. In the interim, that means the solution is making those offensive explosions count. When Rice is hot, making that extra shot to turn a 5-0 run into a 7-0 run will help buy them some cushion in the event they need it later in the game and history shows, that time will probably come.

Up Next: CBI Tournament vs 4-Seed Southern Utah (1:00 p.m. CT)

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CBI Tournament: Ohio stuns Rice Basketball at the buzzer

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Leading with five seconds on the clock, Rice Basketball watched their CBI Tournament stint come to an end on a buzzer-beating shot by Ohio.

Rice basketball showed up roughly 10 minutes late for the 6:30 p.m. tipoff of the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) Tournament. The Owls were on the court at the same time as their opponent, the Ohio Bobcats, but it took the Owls a while to get going and the Bobcats were right on time.

Ohio scored the first three baskets of the game and burst out to a 13-point lead before the game clock hit 10:00 in the first half. Rice was turning the ball over, they were shooting 20 percent from the field. Nothing was going right as they veered dangerously close to hitting the beach early.

Head coach Scott Pera saw it the same way. When asked what happened at that pivotal moment in the game, Pera shot straight: “The Rice basketball team showed up after 17-4 because I don’t know what was going on to start it,” he said. “We took a deep breath. We recovered and made it a game the rest of the way.”

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Trailing by 13, Rice roared back, outscoring Ohio 18-5 over the next six minutes and change to tie the game back up at 24-24. Rather than call it a season, Rice responded with an emphatic “Not Done Yet.” The Owls would go into halftime trailing by one, very much so back in the game.

The second half was much closer. Although Ohio led for the vast majority of the remainder of the contest, their advantage seemed to hang near six or seven points for much of the half. Their latest lead of the half, a 10-point margin that pushed the Owls into do-or-die mode, came with 5:24 to play. Once more, Rice fought back.

Carl Pierre was electric when in mattered most. He scored nine points in the final four minutes include the jumper with five seconds on the clock that looked like it might send Rice basketball through to the second round.

But it wasn’t to be. For as furious as the Owls’ rally had been, things ended one defensive stand shy of victory.  Ohio grabbed the ball and dashed down the court, hitting a layup at the buzzer to sink the Owls’ further postseason dreams.

Player Spotlight | Travis Evee

As beat up and under-manned as Rice basketball was down the stretch, they could ill afford to get negligible production from their core players. That’s part of what made Trave Evee’s cold snap over the Owls’ last three games so devasting. He averaged 6.0 points per game in those three contests, shooting 14 percent from the field.

So when Rice fell behind early, it was now or never for Evee. He hit his first three of the game with 5:37 to play in the first half, then spurred an 8-0 Rice run with a fastbreak layup shortly after. He would finish with 12 points, second-most on the team, also adding four rebounds, four assists and a setal.

Stat Corner | 94 percent

Green Light U, as Rice basketball dubbed themselves early this season, was founded on the Owls’ ability to shoot, and to shoot well. Entering the postseason, Rice basketball had won 15 of 16 games when Rice finished with a better field goal percentage than their opponents. The opposite was also true — Rice had lost 15 of 16 games in which their opponents had out-shot them.

So when Carl Pierre hit a jumper with five seconds to play and Rice was outshooting Ohio 45.9 percent to 39.1 percent, it seemed like Rice was going to pull out the win just as they’d 94 percent of the time throughout the season.

Unfortunately for him and the Owls, tonight was a night where the conventional numbers weren’t hitting as they used to. Rice shot a season-low five free throws to counteract their shooting edge.

Final Box | Ohio 65 – Rice 64

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Rice Basketball: Sizing up Owls vs Ohio in CBI

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14-Seed Rice basketball takes on 3-Seed Ohio in the first round of the CBI Tournament on Saturday. Here’s everything you need to know.

How to follow

When: Sat. March 19 at 6:30 p.m.
Streaming: FloHoops ($)
Radio: RiceOwls.com
Stats: RiceOwls.com

Sizing up the Rice Owls

Rice basketball is playing in the postseason for the first time under head coach Scott Pera. The program has won at least one conference tournament game in each of the past two seasons and now gets its chance at a postseason berth.

More: Rice basketball accepts bid to CBI Tournament

The Owls have the edge on the offensive efficiency side, shooting 45.9 percent from the floor this season and 37.3 percent from three compared to the Bobcat’s 43.1 percent clip from the floor 34.0 percent from three. Rice has 500 assists on the season compared to Ohio’s 422,

Sizing up the Ohio Bobcats

Ohio reached the semifinals of the MAC Tournament where they fell to Kent State. A season ago, Ohio was a 13-seed in the NCAA Tournament where they upset 4-seed Virginia in the first round. They are led by guard Mark Sears, who is second in the MAC with 19.5 points per game.

The Bobcats protect the basketball well, averaging just 10.5 turnovers per game to the Owls’ 12.5 turnovers. They enter the game with a 24-9 record but picked up five of those losses in their last seven outings.

How Rice got here

By the time Rice basketball reached conference play and returned to full strength following a string of COVID cases that plagued the roster, it was early January. The team was 7-5 following a crushing defeat against North Texas. Then they started winning. More than that — they started looking the part.

Rice beat the eventual Conference USA Tournament champion and NCAA Tournament-bound UAB in a stretch of games in which they went 5-3. Then, in Pera’s own words “Quincy [Olivari] goes down and the whole season changes.” Rice would drop a close game to UTEP following Olivari’s wrist injury that ended his season. Then the Owls would lose six of their final seven regular-season conference games.

Why it matters

It’s been more than a month since Olivari’s injury. When Rice tips off against Ohio, Pera and his staff will have had 10 games to tinker and craft a gameplan that utilized the strengths that still remain. A win would be the first for the program since they won an opening-round game in the CBI in 2017.

A week ago Pera said this team would be “excited as heck” to get a chance to play postseason basketball. After all this team has been through, moving on in the postseason would speak volumes.

Rice has already reached 16 wins, the best of any season of Pera’s tenure, but the success feels somewhat muted because of just how successful many — Pera included — thought this team could have become. There have been a lot of bad breaks along the way. Players are hurt and the roster is thin. But the ball is officially in their court.

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