Men's basketball falls to Portland State in final-second loss

By Brody Rollins     11/20/08 6:00pm

From the opening tip to the waning seconds, the basketball team battled back and forth but ultimately lost to unanimous Big Sky conference preseason favorite Portland State University. The match-up was the first ever men's game played in the renovated Tudor Fieldhouse on Saturday.IN PHOTOS: OPENING WEEKEND AT TUDOR FIELDHOUSE

The Owls shot the ball well during the game, hitting 52 percent of their shots. The first shot to go in was a layup by junior guard Cory Pflieger, who also scored a team high 17 points. Pflieger played in only five games last season after sustaining a serious ankle injury in November against Eastern Illinois University.

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Rice's touch from the perimeter opened up the baseline for multiple backdoor cuts and easy buckets, which translated into an early 10-point lead.

PSU played catch-up throughout the half and by halftime Rice held a narrow 36-33 lead.

Rebounding was the sorest spot for the Owls, who played their first game without departed seniors Paulius Packevicius (Wiess '08) and Patrick Britton (Jones '08), the top two rebounders on the team last season.

The Vikings hauled in 11 offensive rebounds in the first half and had 17 in the game to Rice's five. In total rebounds the story was the same as PSU dominated the category 38-27. For the Owls, senior forward Aleks Perka led the team with nine rebounds, and senior guard Rodney Foster followed with four. Foster also dished a game-high nine assists.

PSU used its rebounding prowess in the first half to score 15 second-chance points while the Owls recorded just two. The same disparity held true for points in the paint where Rice was outscored 20-10.

"The same problem that we had throughout the game was rebounding," Pflieger said. "We knew going into halftime that if we limited that we would put them away in the second half. But in the second half they knocked down shots and that's how it turned out."

The second half did prove to be different for both teams as PSU improved on their 35 percent shooting in the first half by nearly 20 percentage points. The Owls' slim lead evaporated quickly, as did their shooting when they went a seven and a half minute stretch with just two field goals, both dunks from Perka.

With 3:12 left and PSU's lead holding at 10, Rice called a team timeout that paid dividends in the form of a 7-0 run. The points came on buckets from Pflieger, freshman guard Connor Frizzelle and a three-point play from sophomore center Trey Stanton.

With 1:32 remaining and the score 73-70, reigning Big Sky player of the year Jeremiah Dominguez made the play of the game, draining a step-back three pointer to increase the Vikings lead to six. The senior guard led all scorers with 24 points, 17 of which came in the second half.

The lead would prove be insurmountable even as the Vikings missed four free throws in the final minute.

While the Owls were not successful in knocking off favored PSU, they did find reason to be optimistic after dominating the game statistically.

"Some of the stats that we had usually spell a victory," head coach Ben Braun said. "We shot over 50 percent from the floor, we went to the [free throw] line almost 30 times, we had almost 20 assists and we kept turnovers down to six."

Saturday's game also saw the debut of two newcomers in the Owls starting lineup. Stanton, a sophomore transfer, started at center and scored 14 points. Frizzelle, a freshman, started at point guard and played 31 minutes, third on the team behind Foster and Pflieger. Forward Lucas Kuipers was the only other freshman to see time in the game, and he logged 19 minutes and scored three points.

With the excitement of seven lead changes and the enthusiasm of the Autry Army out in force, it was easy to forget that entering this season Rice had not secured a victory since beating Texas Christian University last December, a period spanning 20 games.

The Owls look to break that streak Thursday night when they travel to Utah to face California Polytechnic Institute in the Basketball Travelers Invitational. The Mustangs enter the game with a 0-1 record after losing by 27 points to University of Arkansas-Little Rock.

Rice plays tournament host Brigham Young University on Friday and the University of North Florida on Saturday in the tournament's final game. The Ospreys of North Florida are coming off their own 26-loss season from a year ago in which they went 1-15 in Atlantic Sun conference play. The lead would prove be insurmountable even as the Vikings missed four free throws in the final minute.

While the Owls were not successful in knocking off favored PSU, they did find reason to be optimistic after dominating the game statistically.

"Some of the stats that we had usually spell a victory," head coach Ben Braun said.

"We shot over 50 percent from the floor, we went to the [free throw] line almost 30 times, we had almost 20 assists and we kept turnovers down to six."

Last Saturday's game also saw the debut of two newcomers in the Owls starting lineup. Sophomore transfer Trey Stanton started at center and scored 14 points. Frizzelle, a freshman, started at point guard and played 31 minutes, third on the team behind Foster and Pfleiger. Forward Lucas Kuipers was the only other freshman to see time in the game, and he logged 19 minutes and scored three points.

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