UNT has only lost to Oklahoma and has wins against New Mexico, Indiana State, and Portland. The rest of their schedule has not been especially tough but this is going to be a tough game for the Owls to win. Grant McCasland seems to be doing a good job with their program in his second year, despite having 3 players transfer after the end of last season.

UNT beat Rice twice last year on their way to 20 wins. Rice plays the Mean Green Saturday and again January 19

Also notable is that both men’s basketball team’s current records were among the most popular predicted for each school’s respective football team this season.

Maybe with Fine & Littrell coming back next year they can get to 12 wins in FB. And 5-8 is doable for Rice FB.

And back on-topic, this afternoon’s game is a 2pm CT tip-off from Tudor Fieldhouse.
ESPN+ carries the live internet stream ($5/mo or free trial).

This is about as bad a matchup as there is for us. Basically everybody on UNT can shoot/score. Can't rely on taking one or two guys out of the game...have to play full team defense, five guys on the same page which we haven't seen much of.

30 minutes until tip-off.

Fun fact: as the first CUSA game in the league... whoever leads this game at any given time will “lead” CUSA!!

Go Owls - up 12-8 to start!

Ben Braun is on the call again.. Does he still reside in Houston?

Really, really good start. Don't think I've seen better defensive effort/discipline in the last 5 years against this caliber of opponent.

Our potential is really showing today. Excellent effort in all phases.

Pretty good from 3 point range too 6/8.
Rice 40-29 lead inside 5 minutes of 1H

(12-29-2018 03:20 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Ben Braun is on the call again.. Does he still reside in Houston?

I don't believe so. I talked to him at one of the other games he did and I thought he told me he was living somewhere else but I can't recall where, sorry.

Total disaster stretch. UNT up 3.

That lead vanished pretty quick.

(12-29-2018 03:41 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  

(12-29-2018 03:20 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Ben Braun is on the call again.. Does he still reside in Houston?

I don't believe so. I talked to him at one of the other games he did and I thought he told me he was living somewhere else but I can't recall where, sorry.

He is back in California.

Tough final 5 minutes as we couldn’t stop the drives and then they hit some 3’s meanwhile defensively they really clamped down on us. Down 48-43.

I just don't know what Williams offers on the court. His outside shooting is poor, the offense stagnates when we feed him inside, and he's average defensively.

We're the 20th worst defense in the country for a reason. UNT scored 19 points in the last 3:48 of the half. 19!!! We were never going to win a shootout with them. We're going to have to string a bunch of stops together to stop the half or this is going to be a blowout.

And, an interesting tidbit: Ryan Woolridge (#0 on UNT) really wanted to come to Rice after he transferred from USD. Didn't have room for him with Rhoades' first two recruiting classes.

(12-29-2018 03:50 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  I just don't know what Williams offers on the court. His outside shooting is poor, the offense stagnates when we feed him inside, and he's average defensively.

We're the 20th worst defense in the country for a reason. UNT scored 19 points in the last 3:48 of the half. 19!!! We were never going to win a shootout with them. We're going to have to string a bunch of stops together to stop the half or this is going to be a blowout.

17-1 down the stretch. Went from our biggest lead 42-31 to 48-43.

I'm not sure who we should play instead of Williams though. I've seen signs that he's a decent team leader despite being a 1st year Owl. Maybe put in Jones for defensive purposes?

(12-29-2018 03:53 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I'm not sure who we should play instead of Williams though. I've seen signs that he's a decent team leader despite being a 1st year Owl. Maybe put in Jones for defensive purposes?

Yeah, I should have qualified what I said by also saying we don't really have any other options. Just hope QMB/Murphy/Peterson can eat up a bunch of minutes. Maybe see what Tim can do for a couple of minutes.

Nonsensical from Pera not to start Rob in the second half. The one guy consistently scoring, and vocally leading, and you start him on the bench and promptly give up an 11-1 start to effectively blow open the game.

Absurd shooting from UNT. Don't think we'd be beating them with our best game today. Not sure how you defend guys casually pulling up from anywhere.