Miners pose problems for Owls, whose win streak ends

Rice had two streaks at stake Saturday night — one that had the Owls winners of five straight and the other that had them under UTEP’s thumb.

UTEP is a conundrum. The Miners made it seven straight over the Owls with a 79-71 win at Tudor Fieldhouse, putting a dent in Rice’s feel-good win streak.

UTEP (11-15, 9-5 Conference USA) is 21-11 all-time against Rice, has won 17 of the past 21 and is 5-1 at Tudor Fieldhouse.

“It comes to mind,” Rice forward Egor Koulechov said of the struggles against the Miners. “But at the end of the day, it’s another conference game.

“Every game is a new game. Every year is a new year. We just have to learn from this and move on.”

Rice was looking for its first six-game winning streak in one season since 1969-70.

Rice (18-9, 8-6) had a close call against the Miners last year in a 61-60 defeat off Dominic Artis’ game-winning layup with 12 seconds left in El Paso.

Artis had 16 points and seven assists Saturday, trumped by Houston native Paul Thomas’ 17 points and 10 rebounds.

Rice never saw the lead Saturday.

The Owls were 7.1 percent from 3-point range and 7-of-27 from the field at halftime — not ideal for a team that relies on hot shooting.

They were behind by five at that point and remained a few paces behind in the second half.

Rice finished 34.5 percent from the field for the game.

Rice coach Mike Rhoades said it wasn’t that great of a shooting night in Thursday’s win over UTSA, either.

“I think today it affected our defense,” Rhoades said. “That’s how it goes. We have to learn from it and don’t let it happen again. We have to guard people.”

Rice had 13 points apiece from Koulechov and guard Chad Lott. Guard Marcus Evans had 11 points. Koulechov and Lott were a combined 5-of-18 from the field, which is far from the norm for Rice’s top two shooters.

Evans was in foul trouble in the second half and fouled out.

UTEP let its size do the talking, beginning with 7-1 Matt Willms early and 6-8 Thomas later. The Miners outscored Rice 24-10 in the paint.

Omega Harris’ 15 points spurred UTEP even more.

Jake Flaggert’s 3-pointer gave UTEP its largest lead of the night at 14 points with 14:23 remaining.

Rice cut the deficit to seven points three times after that on Marcus Jackson’s 3-pointer with 4:13 remaining, a pair of Koulechov free throws with 1:15 left and a Lott layup with 59 seconds left.

But UTEP always answered. Artis scored 11 of his 16 in the second half. And a usually potent Rice couldn’t recoup offensively.

“They had a good game plan,” Lott said. “It was really hard for us as a team to get into rhythm and that’s a big part of our game — scoring fast, scoring a lot of points, shooting 3s and tonight we just didn’t get into rhythm well.”