Men's basketball treads water in conference play

By Ryan Glassman     2/3/11 6:00pm

With the top seven teams in Conference USA separated by a single game, even the shortest of win streaks can turn a season around. For the men's basketball team, such a theory was applied last week when back-to-back wins over the University of Central Florida (14-6, 1-6 C-USA) and the University of Houston (11-11, 3-6 C-USA) put the Owls within a stone's throw of the conference leaders. But when Southern Methodist University (17-5, 6-3 C-USA) brought its own two-game winning streak to Tudor Fieldhouse last Saturday, only one team would be able to continue on its rapid ascent in the C-USA standings. Unfortunately for Rice, the weather was not the only thing in Houston that cooled down this past week.

The Owls fell to a hot-shooting SMU team 75-68, falling back below .500 on the season and putting an end to the squad's short winning streak.

Rice jumped out to a 15-6 lead early in the game, utilizing strong pick-and-roll defense to contain SMU's two-man attack of Papa Dia and Robert Nyakundi. With Dia in early foul trouble and five different Owls already contributing to the team's scoring, SMU found itself in a big hole just a few minutes into the game. But Nyakundi was there to dig them out by outscoring the Owls 11-5 over the next six minutes to keep the game close with Dia on the bench. A three-pointer from junior forward Lucas Kuipers with 6:41 preserved Rice's lead amid the SMU run, but such fate was short-lived for the Owls in the half. Plagued by turnovers and poor shooting, Rice surrendered the lead with 4:15 to go in the first half, before back-to-back three pointers inside of two minutes gave the Mustangs a 35-29 lead going into the half. With Dia and Nyakundi combining for 30 of SMU's 35 points, the pick-and-roll defense would have to improve for Rice to battle back in the game.

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After surrendering a pair of three-pointers to begin the second half, Rice battled back when senior guard Bryan Beasley's demonstrative block of an SMU dunk attempt channeled out to a fast-break dunk from sophomore forward Arsalan Kazemi that pumped up the crowd. Following a Kazemi layup and a jumper from junior guard Connor Frizzelle, sophomore guard Tamir Jackson's jumper made it a 44-42 game with more than 13 minutes to go. But, as was the theme of the game, SMU responded to the Rice run with outstanding shooting from behind the arc. The Mustangs put together a 13-2 run with a trio of three-pointers to extend their lead to 13 before a Frizzelle deep ball at 9:08 woke up the stagnant Rice offense.

Jackson injected more life into the crowd when he scored six points in just 31 seconds to cut SMU's lead to four. After a free throw, Jackson recorded two back-to-back steals in the backcourt and converted them into layups, the second of which drew a foul and a made free throw.

With the crowd back in the game and SMU on the ropes, it again was Nyakundi who provided the response for the Mustangs. After a pair of free throws from Kazemi, who led Rice with 21 points and 16 rebounds, Nyakundi hit his seventh deep ball of the game with 2:09 remaining to push the lead to seven and take the crowd out of the game once again.

"It's just hard to come from behind," Frizzelle, who contributed 17 points, said. "Basketball is a game of runs, and we just couldn't get enough of them."

Senior center Trey Stanton exchanged a pair of three-pointers with SMU free throws to cut the deficit to five with a minute left, but Rice could not force a turnover, and the Mustangs iced the game from the line. Led by Nyakundi's 29 points, SMU knocked off Rice by a final of 75-68 to extend its streak and put an end to the winning ways of the Owls.

SMU shot an astounding 56 percent from the field for the game, much the product of its offensive execution with the pick and roll to free up shooters.

"[The pick-and-roll defense] has been a strength of ours all year long. We didn't do an effective job of guarding the ball screens," Head Coach Ben Braun said. "I don't think we were as sharp, crisp and clean as we needed to be. We had certain opportunities to exploit, and we didn't do that today."

The opportunity to extend their win streak went for naught on Saturday, but perhaps Wednesday night's game at Tulane would be the beginning of another streak.

With the Owls still nursing the stinging defeat against SMU and looking to avenge their 85-81 loss to the Green Wave in Houston on Jan. 5, it was clear from the start that Braun's crew had no shortage of desire. Despite Tulane starting out with a 14-7 lead early in game, Rice stormed back to tie the game at 31 at the half. Once the speeches had been made and the Gatorade cups had been tossed aside, it was clear who would leave Fogelman Arena with a victory. After shooting a pedestrian 35 percent in the first half, Rice shot 62 percent in the second half, along with 91 percent from the charity stripe. This last statistic was a particularly good sign, as Rice had shot just 72 percent from the line before the game. Frizzelle took six trips to the free-throw line, converting nine of 11 on his way to tallying 25 points, a career high. Not to be outdone, Kazemi hauled in 19 rebounds, a career high for him as well, along with 11 points. Jackson chipped in as well with 20 points, meaning that 56 of the Owls' points came from their big 3. The defense held its own as well, as the perimeter defense held Tulane to just 22 percent shooting from behind the three-point arc, a point that Rice struggled with against the Mustangs, and ultimately helped Rice dispatch the Green Wave by a count of 71-61. The Owls head back to Tudor Fieldhouse to take on the University of Texas-El Paso (17-5, 5-2 C-USA) tomorrow at 2 p.m.

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