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Rice Basketball Recruiting: Owls sign guard Jake Lieppert from JUCO ranks

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JUCO guard Jake Lieppert has committed to Rice Basketball. The sharpshooting guard will give the Owls a scoring threat from deep next season.

Rice basketball has restocked the cupboard on the fly this spring. After losing several key pieces to graduation and the Transfer Portal, the Owls signed a host of important additions. Jake Lieppert, a guard from Pima Community College in Arizona, was one of five players announced by the program in recent weeks.

The Owls’ new addition dominated his peers at the junior college level. He capped off his first collegiate season as the ACCAC Freshman of the Year.

Lieppert averaged 23.7 points per game and led the nation with 125 made three pointers. Had he done it at Rice, his 41.7 percent three-point field goal percentage would have been the best on the team, edging Quincy Olivari’s 38.0 mark from distance. Bottom line: Lieppert can shoot.

At his best, Lieppert is a scorer with incredible range. None of the Owls’ returning players took more than 100 threes last season. Of those who took more than 60, roughly two attempts per game only Olivari shot better than 27.0 percent.

The Roost Podcast: Listen now to our Extended Offseason Interview Series

The obvious role in combination with all that Rice has to offer helped ease Lieppert ‘s decision. Restrictions put in place alongside the coronavirus outbreak prevented him from taking any kind of visit to South Main during his recruitment process. Instead, he built and grew a relationship with head coach Scott Pera and the staff virtually.

Despite the unusual circumstances, Lieppert said Rice offered two important things: “high-level basketball and academics”. In person meetings or not, that wasn’t something he was going to pass up.

Lieppert will be eligible to play immediately. As long as he can bring his sharpshooting ability from Arizona to Texas, he should be a key component in the Owls’ rotation next season and beyond.

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Rice Basketball Recruiting: Guard Cavit Ege Havsa commits to Owls

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Turkish guard Cavit Ege Havsa has committed to Rice basketball. The grad transfer will have one year of eligibility remaining at South Main.

Rice basketball was active on the transfer market this spring. When outgoing transfers threatened the depth of the program across the board, the Owls did not waste any time. They added players from the prep, junior college and grad transfer ranks, that included international guard Cavit Ege Havsa.

Havsa was one of the most well-traveled graduate transfers before he committed to Rice basketball. The Turkish native played internationally on the U20 Turkish National team and in several European tournaments prior to that. The grassroots program he grew up playing for, Anadolu Efes, also developed former NBA star Hedo Trukoglu. After spending most of his time connected to Turkish basketball, Havsa moved to the States.

Havsa spent his first two collegiate seasons at Fordham, where he appeared in 49 games, mostly as a reserve. He averaged 4.0 points, 3.1 assists and 1.9 rebounds per game, shooting 45.1 percent from the field.

The Roost Podcast: Listen now to our Extended Offseason Interview Series

From there he transferred to Utah Valley State, sitting out the 2018-2019 season and making his debut last year. Havsa was a key bench player for the Wolverines, averaging 16 minutes per game. He was third on the team in assists and second in three point field goal percentage, shooting .375 from distance.

At 6-foot-4, Havsa has some size, but he hasn’t been a big rebounder in either of his previous stops. His impact will come from his precision passing and ability to make threes. The Owls will need both skillsets to replace most of their primary ballhandlers from last season’s team.

Havsa will have one season of eligibility at Rice, his third and final stop of his collegiate career. Both head coach Scott Pera and he hope it’s an impactful victory lap for the well-traveled senior.

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Rice Basketball Recruiting: Owls add transfer Travis Evee from VMI

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Rice basketball hit the Transfer Portal hard this spring, adding former VMI point guard Travis Evee to their roster. He’ll sit one season prior to being eligible for the Owls.

Attrition struck the Rice basketball roster hard this offseason, leaving several holes that need to be filled. Fortunately for the Owls, reinforcements are on the way. Although he won’t suit up for Rice until the 2021-2022 season, incoming transfer Travis Evee has high hopes for his time at South Main.

A transfer from VMI, Evee committed to the Owls in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown. He has yet to step foot on campus or meet the coaching staff in person, obstacles he wouldn’t let stand in the way of finding his way to what he called “the best place for me.”

The Roost Podcast: Listen now to our Extended Offseason Interview Series

The external environment for his decision was far from ideal, but he says he feels confident he made the right choice. Ultimately it came down to relationships. Head coach Scott Pera provided a level of comfort that made Evee confident he was ready to head to Texas.

“I felt Rice was a great place where I can be challenged academically and athletically,” Evee said.

Evee was the Southern Conference Freshman of the Year this past season, leading VMI with 12.6 points per game. He shot 36.2 percent from three, building upon a strong track record of success from deep. Evee set a single-season record in high school with 104 made three-pointers. Shooting is his strong suit, making him a perfect fit for what Pera wants to build at Rice.

On the court, Evee prides himself as being a “team first” player who promises to bring a winning attitude to South Main. Rice basketball will need a facilitator in the future with the graduation of Ako Adams. As soon as he’s able, Evee is ready to step in and fill that role at Rice.

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Rice Basketball Recruiting: Owls add transfer Riley Abercrombie from Boise St

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Former Boise State forward Riley Abercrombie will transfer to Rice basketball. He’s expected to be eligible to play this coming season.

Rice basketball had to retool after graduation and transfers thinned out its roster. Head coach Scott Pera hit the transfer portal, looking for the right players to fortify the depleted roster. Five new Owls have been added in the past few weeks. One of those new additions is returning back to Houston after two brief years away from home.

Boise State transfer Riley Abercrombie will transfer to Rice. Although no official announcement has been made at this time, he’s expected to be eligible for the 2020-2021 season. Abercrombie is an Australian native who played his high school basketball at Clear Lake in Houston. The 6-foot-9 forward spent the last two years at Boise.

Abercrombie redshirted his first season before seeing his first collegiate action last season. He played in 18 games,  last season, seeing extended action twice. He scored six points in 12 minutes against Alabama State and four points in 17 minutes against Utah State. For his career, Abercrombie tallied 23 points, 12 rebounds and three assists.

The Roost Podcast: Listen now to our Extended Offseason Interview Series

Even though several of his peers were not afforded the same opportunity, Abercrombie had the chance to visit campus and had previously met the coaches in person. That played a crucial role in his decision making process, one which he’s confident has led him to the right place.

Abercrombie cited a combination of driving forces in his decision to come to South Main including the Owls’ “great style of play” as well as “opportunity at [his] position.” The staff and the proximity to home were important as well. The academics rounded out the full picture. When it came time to make his decision, he called it “a no brainer in the end.”

He’ll add some size on the outside as well as another shooting presence from the wing. Abercrombie prides himself on his deep ball and expects to drop some threes when he gets on the court in Houston.

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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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