Men's basketball breaks 19-game conference losing streak

By Brody Rollins     1/15/09 6:00pm

The men's basketball team's conference drought stretched a span of nearly two years, but as of last Wednesday, the Owls' Conference USA woes are no more. Although they lost the C-USA opener against Tulane University, Rice (6-10. 1-1 C-USA) rocked Southern Methodist University at home on Wednesday to heave the season's biggest remaining monkey off their back. The Owls will attempt to continue their mastery of home play in tomorrow afternoon's match-up against the University of Central Florida at Tudor Fieldhouse. UCF's (11-6, 0-2 C-USA) biggest threat is preseason all C-USA guard Jermaine Taylor. Taylor is averaging a league-leading 23.7 points per game and has been instrumental in the Knights' hot start, which includes a close loss to the University of Memphis in their C-USA opener.

"UCF is one of the top teams in our league," head coach Ben Braun said. "They've got some good players, [and] they brought in a couple of good recruits."

UCF returns two of five starters from last year's squad but only two players who averaged more than five points per game. However, this year's team, headed by 15-year head coach Kirk Speraw, looks just as talented as the previous three that finished fifth, second, and tied for fourth in the conference.

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Aside from Taylor, UCF has two other players averaging nearly 10 points per game, including freshman guard Isaac Sosa, who was named C-USA Rookie of the Week earlier this season.

If the Owls are to get by the Knights, they will need to learn from the mistakes they made against the Green Wave. Tulane (7-9, 1-2 C-USA) led throughout most of the first half before the Owls went on a 9-2 run, which tied the game at 28-28 at the break. Junior guard Lawrence Ghoram paced the Owls early with nine points, in what was just his third start of the season.

Ghoram, who started 27 of 30 games last season, has struggled to find minutes while recovering from off-season surgery. Freshman guard Connor Frizzelle has played admirably in his place, but Braun credits Ghoram for his patience and impressive experience when he is on the floor.

"Cliff [is] one of our best competitors and I think he has really given our team a lift," Braun said. "He was injured to start the year, but now I think he's playing at a very high level. He's healthy again, his experience is kicking in, and he plays hard."

Ghoram finished the game with a season-high 17 points on 5-10 shooting.

Nine minutes into the second half, Frizzelle tied the game at 40-40 with a jumper. Unfortunately, the Owls would not score again for another four and a half minutes, while Tulane went on a 10-0 run.

A pivotal sequence during that run was an offensive rebound by Tulane that came from a missed layup, giving the Green Wave the lead at 50-40.

"We got decent size, but we're missing block-outs and giving up offensive rebounds," junior guard Cory Pflieger said. "We'll have defensive sequences where we'll play good defense, we'll shut them down, but we have a letdown and don't get the rebound."

The letdowns to which he is referring have led to opponents averaging a Conference USA-high 72.6 points on 45 percent shooting.

The smallest the Owls could get the deficit was six points, after a three-point shot by freshman forward Lucas Kuipers with 44 seconds to go in the contest.

Kuipers, like Ghoram, was inserted into the starting lineup after the start of the season. With senior forward Aleks Perka returning to the rotation after recovering from injury, this has meant that sophomore center Trey Stanton has been coming off the bench. At 6'10'', Stanton is the tallest player on the team and has continued to build the reputation as a supreme defender he acquired during his freshman season at Navy.

Kuipers and Ghoram have both led the team in scoring for a game this season, and they are looking for more options on the offense that ranks second worst in the C-USA at 65.6 points per game.

Following the loss in New Orleans, the Owls returned to Tudor Fieldhouse on Wednesday to continue the search for its first conference win of the year. SMU (5-9, 0-2) and the Owls entered the matchup as the only two teams in C-USA with losing records. The Mustangs were an abysmal 0-4 on the road heading into the game, likely a result of the team's youth.

The Owls exploited the Mustangs' inability to handle inside pressure, and with a 69-57 win, they made their 19-game C-USA losing streak a thing of the past. Rice took advantage of a slow start by SMU to jump out to an early lead that widened to as much as 18 points; before the half, the gap was 15 points.

The Mustangs hit only one of their first 17 shots and were never able to settle into a rhythm offensively.

Third-year head coach Matt Doherty, formerly of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, was able to rally his team into a 14-0 second-half run that saw the Owl lead shrink to as few as three points.

Ghoram ended the run when he connected on a jumper for two of his game-high 17 points. From then on the Owls were able to maintain a sizeable advantage over the Mustangs, who did not hold the lead at any point during the game.

The junior also added a team-high eight rebounds, four assists and two steals. After being elevated to the starting lineup, Ghoram has been the team's most consistent offensive threat, averaging over 14 points over the past three games.

The Owls' frontcourt defense set the tone as the platoon of posts used by Braun limited the shot count of SMU's talented big men. Led by forwards Bamba Fall and Papa Dia, SMU outscored the Owls 40 to 20 in the paint, but all too often Rice's defense held the Mustangs to jump shots. SMU shot 36 percent from the field for the game and hit on just three of 24 shots from beyond the three-point line.

"I think we've done a pretty good job this year on limiting the other team's best player," Braun said. "Our problem has been sometimes letting other guys get loose. So while you put all your attention on the other team's best scorer and try to hold him under his average, you don't want to do that at the expense of giving some guys career nights.

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