Pera enjoys ‘special connection’ to seniors
Coach gives group credit for program’s continued progress
Rice seniors aren’t taking anything for granted ahead of Conference USA bonus play.
The Owls coasted through bonus play and into last year’s CUSA tournament for the first time since coach Scott Pera took over in 2017. Despite a first-round exit, Rice’s 3-1 bonus-play record helped propel it toward the program’s best start under him earlier this season.
But in a year when the conference has been especially competitive, simply qualifying for this year’s tournament will be a challenge.
“We know that we can beat anyone, but we can also lose to anyone,” senior forward Robert Martin said. “It’s just making sure that we do what we need to do, focusing on us and not so much who’s in front of us.”
The Owls’ 2020 class has had an eventful four years with Pera.
They were there to hug and cheer Pera when athletic director Joe Karlgaard announced that he’d been promoted after serving as the associate head coach for three years. They experienced the drop-off from a 22-win season that ended with a short run in the 2017 College Basketball Invitational to just 20 victories over the next two years — and the departure of a dozen graduate and undergraduate transfers during that span.
Rice’s growth has been gradual, staggered by those rosterdraining departures and a litany of near comebacks. But after some turbulence, Pera hopes a firm foundation is finally in place.
“It hasn’t been a perfect basketball or school experience for (the seniors) and that’s OK. Life isn’t perfect,” Pera said. “So when it’s not, how do you react? Who do you rely on? Who do you trust to help you get through those things, and I know they leaned on each other a lot. I know I leaned on them a lot, and hopefully they leaned on me a lot for all of us to grow and build this program. So I have a very special connection to these guys.”
At times, it seemed like Rice had the pieces.
Guard Connor Cashaw spent the 2017-18 season honing his best impression of Atlas, after carrying the team on his back after it lost six players — including four starters — ahead of Pera’s first season. Three months after that season ended, Cashaw and promising freshman Malik Osborne had joined four other players on their way out of the program.
Last year, with a talented freshmen class that finally gave Pera a deep core of returning players, center Quentin MilloraBrown surprised coaches and teammates when he announced his transfer to Vanderbilt.
“After freshman year, I had a choice if I was going to leave or not. I didn’t play much, (so) it was an opportunity to leave,” Martin said. “But no. I came here for the academics. And once coach Pera got the job, I was committed.”
Four of the Owls’ five seniors started their careers at Rice — Martin, Ako Adams, Tim Harrison and Addison Owen — and all five, including graduate student Tommy McCarthy, started in Saturday’s win over Charlotte.
But after three years, Pera was just pleased that he was able to celebrate Senior Day with that many players.
“Last year, we had Oli (Xu), Dylan ( Jones) and Jack (Williams),” Pera said. “That first year, who did we even have senior-wise? Bishop (Mency) and J.T. (Trauber)? So it was kind of cool. You could almost do a one, two, three, four, five with each position, so that made it fun.
“I started a tradition in my office where each one of the individual pictures of the seniors with me and their families is going across my wall. … There were five of them across my whiteboard and now the wall bends with (four more) and now one above my door.”
To get through to the C-USA tournament for a second straight year, the Owls will need to overcome a pair of teams — UTEP and Southern Miss — that defeated them by a combined 21 points earlier this year. They could need to defeat UTEP twice.
But Pera and his seniors have become accustomed to uncertainty and adversity after their time together.
“I just think about all the things we’ve been through — Hurricane Harvey, coach Pera taking the job, having teammates leave,” Harrison said. “I think that just embodies our ‘nextplay’ mentality. Sometimes you’re dealt cards that you don’t have control of, so it’s about focusing on what you can control and moving on to the next.”