Owls’ comeback falls short
Mean Green win first game in home-and-home series
North Texas guard Mardrez McBride hit a key 3pointer with 2:54 to play to help the Mean Green hold off Rice, 79-74, on Friday at Tudor Field House.
Rice had pulled within one when McBride found himself near the top of the key, ball in hand, with no defenders near him. North Texas’ Zachary Simmons had just secured a major offensive board.
McBride calmly set his feet for the shot and drained the deep jumper to put the Mean Green (8-5, 4-1 C-USA) ahead, 72-68. The Owls (10-7, 4-5 C-USA) could get no closer than three points the rest of the way and dropped the first game of the home-and-home series.
“I thought our guys battled. I thought our approach was terrific. I thought… we just couldn’t get over the hump,” Rice coach Scott Pera said. “We just couldn’t make the plays we had to when it was close.”
Travis Evee led the Owls with 21 points on 7-of-14 shooting. Max Fiedler chipped in 12 points and added eight rebounds, three assists and two blocks. The Mean Green’s Javion Hamlet led all scorers with 30 points.
Rice led for most of the last 13 minutes of the first half. An 8-0 run kick-started by back-to-back Jake Lieppert 3-pointers put the Owls up 19-13, a lead they would hold until a James Reese triple moved the Mean Green ahead 36-35 with fewer than two minutes to go in the half. Evee quickly hit a floater in the lane to put Rice back in the lead heading into halftime.
A turnaround jumper in the lane from Riley Abercrombie extended the lead to 39-36 just 14 seconds after the break. But North Texas went on an 11-3 run from there to move in front. A Peyton Moore layup for the
Owls tied it up at 53 with 10:34 to play, but the Mean Green never trailed again, showing their 13-day break from game play didn’t bring rustiness.
Two of the biggest contributors to the loss in Pera’s mind were missed free throws and turnovers. North Texas shot 14 of 17 (82.4 percent) from the freethrow line compared to Rice’s 17 of 24 (70.8 percent).
At one point, the Owls were winning the turnover battle, coinciding with their largest lead of the game. However, they then turned the ball over 15 more times to the Mean Green’s nine, ultimately spelling doom for the home team.
“It’s always tough to win a game when you have 10plus turnovers. That’s definitely not the recipe for winning,” said Evee, who finished the game with five giveaways. “We had too many turnovers today. A lot of that falls on me, though, as a point guard. I know I had a handful of turnovers today, and that’s just unacceptable.”
The two teams will meet again at 3 p.m. Sunday in Denton.