Rice’s 20-year streak in jeopardy
Rice baseball coach Wayne Graham isn’t pressing a panic button over the possible end of a 20-year run as either regular-season or conference tournament champion.
The only thing the Owls are concerned about is righting the wrongs from an uncharacteristic lateseason dive.
“The conference streak, that’s going to end at some time,” Graham said. “But we sure want to get in a regional.”
Rice (32-20, 19-10 in Conference USA) isn’t in any apparent danger of missing an NCAA regional, but the Owls aren’t comfortable with the lingering feeling the last two weeks have left. They’re using this conference tournament to prove the end of their regular season was an aberration.
Rice enters the C-USA tournament as losers of five straight and six of its last seven. The Owls were swept by Louisiana Tech in a three-game series last weekend — a first since they moved to the conference in 2005. Hosting a regional was on the table two weeks ago. Now, the No. 4-seeded Owls believe themselves to be in survival mode when they meet No. 5 Louisiana Tech for a fourth straight game at 9 a.m. Wednesday in Hattiesburg, Miss.
“We didn’t really play to our abilities in all facets of the game this past weekend,” C-USA Pitcher of the Year Jon Duplantier said. “We are kind of just were eager to get back out tomorrow, play our game and show this weekend maybe wasn’t us.”
It was out of character for a program that has collected conference titles over the last two decades.
Rice’s fourth-place finish is its lowest since tying for sixth in the final year of the Southwest Conference in 1996.
The late-season sputter includes losing the Silver Glove Series to Houston and weather stunted a chance to win a series against eventual conference champion and ranked Florida Atlantic. Instead, the two teams split two games.
Freshman shortstop Ford Proctor said the 20year streak being in jeopardy isn’t a topic in the locker room, but the players understand what’s at stake this week.
After all, no one wants to be on the team that let the streak end.
“It definitely looms over our head a little bit,” said Proctor, who was named the conference’s Freshman of the Year on Tuesday. “Twenty straight years. We try not to think about that too much. Just get after it, play the game that we’ve played all year and play hard and aggressive.”
Part of the problem may be the conference’s competitive rise. Baseball America projects four C-USA teams to make an NCAA regional — the same as the Big Ten and Pac-12 and one more than the Big 12.
Rice lost Game 2 of the Louisiana Tech series 5-4 in 15 innings. But Graham said the Bulldogs were the better team in the other two games — a 12-2 loss in Game 1 and 10-5 in the series finale.
Facing the same team a fourth time in six days is rare, but the Owls are eager to atone for the Tech series.
“We know we have a good enough team to do it,” Graham said. “We’re ready.”