Baseball ready to start Southwest Conference play

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by John Fredland

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The Rice baseball team has competed in the Southwest Conference since 1915, a span of 76 seasons. For all of their efforts, none of those Owl squads was able to bring home the SWC championship.

Well, like Elvis sang, it's now or never.Beginning with the First Pitch Tournament this weekend, Rice will attempt to become the king of the final SWC season.

The Owls start with four games at Cougar Field: the University of Houston yesterday, Texas Tech University tonight, Texas Christian University tomorrow and Texas A&M University on Sunday.

Rice enters SWC play after dominating its pre-conference schedule. Playing a more difficult slate than in the last few seasons, the Owls stand at 20-3 so far, despite a 7-4 loss to McNeese State University on Wednesday.

Their success has been rewarded in the national rankings. Rice is ranked ninth in the nation by USA Today/Baseball Weekly , 11th by Collegiate Baseball and 16th by Baseball America -- all representing an increase of seven places over the previous week.

Still, they have been far from perfect. The Owls can have their sluggish stretches -- they had to come from behind in six games out of their recent eight-game winning streak.

Left-handed pitching can sometimes give Rice trouble, such as when the University of Massachusetts' David Dart held them scoreless for the first five innings of Sunday's 7-3 Owl victory.

Pitching and defense, problem areas in recent seasons, have improved, but shaky performances pop up every once in a while.

Midweek non-conference games can also be dangerous, as evidenced against McNeese State.

Despite these troubles, Head Coach Wayne Graham feels his team is on the right track.

"We've been better against left-handers this year than last year," Graham said.

"Anyway, everyone has trouble against left-handers. Our pitching is near the top in the Southwest Conference, our fielding was leading the conference and our hitting has been pretty good.

"We deserve to be in the top 20 -- we've played nothing but Division-I schools, and we have 20 victories."

Graham points to Rice's more challenging non-conference schedule -- rid of such pushovers as Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M University -- as contributing to their struggles.

"UMass is a pretty good ball club," Graham said. "When you look at the end of the year, you're going to see them in a regional. [Against McNeese], we got caught with a lot of people looking ahead.

"Every team we play this year, we made an attempt to play schools with good baseball programs. Everyone has a high-school all-star at every position."

The road will get tougher in SWC play. Texas Tech, ranked third by USA Today/Baseball Weekly , fourth by Collegiate Baseball and sixth by Baseball America , is considered Rice's co-front-runner for the conference crown.

But the Owls will face several other strong conference foes -- Texas A&M is ranked in the top 20 by Collegiate Baseball and USA Today/Baseball Weekly , and the University of Texas, and TCU have beaten top-25 teams.

"Every team in the conference has had flashes of being good," Graham said. "A&M is awful good -- they have a lot of good players and a lot of physical strength.

"Texas could come back and be as strong as everyone expected. Texas Tech is super strong. Houston has played well at times, and TCU has been good lately."

The Owls have finished one game shy of the SWC crown in both of the last two seasons. Graham likes his team's prospects for kicking down the door this year, but recognizes that they will need to improve in order to claim their first and final SWC title.

"To win it, we're going to have to get a little better," Graham said. "We're competitive right now, but we're going to have to get a little better to win it."

This item appeared in the Sports section of the March 15, 1996 issue.

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