St. Patty's Day brings Rice gutsy win over Longhorns

By Meghan Hall     3/19/09 7:00pm

The way the baseball team has been playing, Omaha is looking a lot closer. The Owls (12-5) finished their seven-game homestand Tuesday night with a 6-3 victory over the University of Texas, ranked tops in the nation, according to Baseball America. On this homestand Rice, currently ranked seventh, also competed in the Academy Sports & Outdoors Rice Classic, followed by a series against the unranked University of San Diego last weekend.

After victories over Washington State University and University of Notre Dame and a loss to Oral Roberts University, the Owls took on San Diego (11-1), then ranked No. 20, for what was supposed to be a four-game series.

In the first game, Rice rode the hot bat of sophomore outfielder Chad Mozingo, who finished with three hits, including a home run, and three runs scored. Junior catcher Diego Seastrunk and sophomore shortstop Rick Hague each contributed two hits. Junior starter Mike Ojala (1-0) controlled the Toreros, giving up only one earned run over a career-long 7.2 innings. Also contributing to the Owls' success was their patience at the plate - they collected 10 walks to only four strikeouts.

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Ten hits for the Owls and four San Diego errors, which led to three unearned runs, culminated in a 9-2 victory, Ojala's first of the season.

Game two was all about junior righthander Ryan Berry, who finished his third complete game victory in a row and twirled a perfect game for the first six innings. A double by San Diego's Bryan Haar in the eighth inning was the team's lone hit. Berry (3-0) also struck out eight and walked none. The unearned run he gave up in the seventh ended Berry's streak of 26.1 innings without a run, but his 28.2-inning streak of no earned runs is still alive.

The Owls did the majority of their scoring in the fifth, when a wild pitch and Mozingo's bases-loaded, two-out single led to three runs. After Berry gave up his only run, freshman third baseman Anthony Rendon responded with a home run in the bottom of the eighth, his team-leading fourth of the year, to reach the final score of 4-1.

Berry lowered his ERA to a team-leading 1.42 and picked up his third consecutive Conference USA Pitcher of the Week award. Berry is the first player in history to win the award three weeks in a row, and his seven total honors are also a league record.

The third game in the series was set for Saturday afternoon, but rain postponed the contest and a doubleheader was scheduled for Sunday. However, more rain limited the play to just one game.

The game, which was interrupted for a three-hour rain delay after the first inning, was scoreless until the fifth, when San Diego capitalized on a wild pitch and a double - both with the bases loaded - for four runs. Two doubles in the sixth and a two-run home run in the eighth brought the final score to 8-0. Freshman starter Taylor Wall (2-2) started the game and gave up four runs, and the Owls were shut out for the first time this year.

Junior second baseman Brock Holt was the only Owl to have more than one hit in the last game of the series.

But that was the weekend. Tuesday night was a completely different story.

Rice was successful against top-ranked Texas (14-3) last Tuesday, with freshman starter Matthew Reckling making his first career start. Any jitters went unnoticed, as the grandson of Reckling Park's namesake finished four innings with one earned run and four strikeouts.

"It was incredible to start against these guys [and to] give my team a chance to win, and they did," Reckling said.

Six Owls finished with multi-hit games, with the most impressive coming from Hague in the form of a two-run home run in the fifth. Hague emphasized his approach to the home run, which came about because of a new focus.

"We've been working on two-strike hitting," Hague said. "[Head] Coach [Wayne Graham] thinks that's going to help us a lot. We had a lot of two-strike hits tonight that put a lot of runs on the board."

Hague is tied for second on the team in home runs: Both he and Seastrunk have three. Seastrunk is also leading the team in hitting at .373, though Rendon is not far behind with a .355 average. Seastrunk is also far ahead of the pack in terms of on-base percentage (.543) and slugging percentage (.686).

Rogers (4-1) got the win against Texas, which vaulted him into the lead among pitchers with four wins. He has a 2.93 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 15.1 innings.

Graham said he was grateful for the win against arguably the toughest team Rice will face all year.

"You just got to feel really gratified, because we've been struggling with the bat," he said. "Beating this ballclub tells you what you might become. There's no guarantee of anything, but it tells you what you might become. It tells you got a shot at being a great team."

Wednesday night the Rice traveled across town to play the University of Houston. The Owls defeated the Cougars 8-1, dropping Houston to 4-15 on the season.

Golf team places 10th at Border

Paul Fitzgerald

Fighting cold temperatures, gusting winds and driving rain all three rounds, the golf team gutted out a 10th-place finish in one of the strongest fields they have faced all year. Rice's three-round score of 902 (+38) tied the Owls with 36th-ranked Vanderbilt University at the Border Olympics, held this week in Laredo, Texas.

The Owls next travel to Austin for the Morris Williams Intercollegiate, which runs March 30-31. The tournament, hosted by the University of Texas, features a field headlined by third-ranked Oklahoma State University, Southern Methodist University and Texas A&M University. The Owls have 15 days between tournaments and will look to use the time to try and regroup as a team following a period in which they played two tournaments in six days.

Sophomore Robert Burrow expected the team to practice intensely looking forward to a strong field.

"I expect the team to prepare hard during our two weeks off," Burrow said. "Texas's field will be one of the strongest we'll ever face, and I expect all of us to relish the opportunity to compete against such a strong group of teams."

Rice opened the Border Olympics by shooting a 303 (+17), led by Burrow's 73. Burrow finished tied for 26th place with a cumulative score of 224 (+8). The Owls' first-round score placed them in a tie for 11th place with the University of Notre Dame.

The Owls second-round score of 300 (+14) put them in 13th place, ahead of only three squads. Sophomore Michael Whitehead's even-par 72 kept the Owls out of the cellar. Whitehead finished tied with Burrow with a three-round score of 224. Rice headed into the final round attempting to salvage something from their trip to Laredo.

Aided by junior Christopher Brown's 72 (E), the Owls shot a 299 (+13) to move up into a tie for 10th place. Brown's three-round score of 222 put him in a tie for 15th, the highest of any Rice golfer this weekend, earning him C-USA Golfer of the Week honors. Senior Kyle Kelley's 232 (+16) put him in a tie for 57th, aided by his low-round score in the second round of 76 (+4).

Baylor University won the Border Olympics with a three-round score of 877 (+13), thanks largely to the fact that their second-round score of 282 (-6) was the lowest of any team score in the tournament. Bobby Massa of University of Texas-Arlington won the tournament's individual title with a cumulative score of 211 (-5). Massa's second-round 66 was the low score of the tournament.

Burrow said Laredo's pounding by rain for all three rounds helped Rice.

"We knew going into the last round that the cold and rainy conditions would give us a chance to move up the leaderboard," Burrow said. "We had a great start to the day, but some trouble on the last few holes prevented us from moving up as far as we would've liked."

Despite their 10th-place finish, the Owls can take some positives away from their time at the Border Olympics. Rice tied Vanderbilt, a nationally-ranked team, and finished ahead of the University of North Texas. Though their at-large postseason chances took a hit, the Owls still must prepare for the conference tournament. The upcoming tournaments hosted by Texas and North Carolina State University will provide the Owls with the chance to compete against the nation's best squads.

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