Baseball team returns to winning form
Perhaps it wasn't a full-fledged resurrection, but the Rice baseball team began to show signs of life over Easter weekend.
The Owls had been freefalling ever since their 20-2 record and No. 9 national ranking of early March. Faltering in all areas of the game, they had been swept in the previous two weekends by Texas Christian and Texas.
Rice's series with Texas Tech seemed more likely to prolong their suffering than cure their ills. The Red Raiders, ranked second in the nation by all polls, entered the weekend poised to become king of the mountain, since No. 1 California State University at Fullerton had dropped two of three games to New Mexico State.
Surprise, surprise. Behind solid starting pitching and timely hitting -- both absent during Rice's riches-to-rags run -- the Owls swept Saturday's doubleheader from the Red Raiders. Although Texas Tech managed to salvage Sunday's series finale, Rice (25-15 overall after a 5-4 loss to Lamar on Tuesday, 4-10 in the Southwest Conference) was able to deny the Red Raiders the top spot in the rankings, as well as leave the weekend with renewed hopes of ascending to another NCAA regional tournament bid.
"It was a long time coming -- a drink of water after a long trip in the desert," Rice shortstop Joseph Cathey said.
"I would think it makes them realize they are capable of beating anybody," Head Coach Wayne Graham said. "Texas Tech is a legitimate top-10 team with a lot of talent. If you beat them two out of three, that means you conceivably could get hot and beat anybody."
Rice's recipe for success against the Red Raiders was mixing strong starting pitching with a sprinkling of timely hits. Shawn Onley and Stephen Bess, both of whom had struggled in recent outings, silenced the potent Texas Tech offense in the doubleheader, and the Owl offense, although a shadow of its early-season strength, came through with enough clutch hits to put them over the top.
In the first game of the doubleheader, Onley fell behind in the first inning when Rice catcher Brandon Fuller allowed Dion Ruecker's pop-up to drop in, and Dave Lindstrom followed with a three-run home run to put Texas Tech up 4-0.
It looked like a repeat of recent disasters, but Onley regained the mastery over his pitches that he had shown in the first month of the season, and gave the Owls the chance to get back into the game.
"You had to bear down -- it was either bear down or leave the game," Onley said. "I wasn't about to leave that early in the game."
Facing only three batters more than the minimum, Onley dominated the Red Raiders throughout the next five innings while Rice rallied to a 5-4 lead on home runs by Bubba Crosby, Lance Berkman and Jacques Landry.
One strike away from victory in the top of the seventh (the first game of a double-header is seven innings), however, Onley surrendered a game-tying home run to Matt Kastelic.
After that, Onley and Matt Anderson were able to keep Texas Tech at bay until Jason Richards drove in William Ford with a suicide-squeeze bunt in the bottom of the ninth and completed Rice's 6-5 triumph.
In the nightcap, Bess picked up where Onley left off. Bess had struggled for much of the previous month, but the discovery of a flaw in his delivery appears to have returned him to early-season form.
"It has something to do with him throwing the breaking ball from the same point as his fastball," Graham said. "That adjustment has made him a better pitcher."
Bess tired in the seventh, but by that time Rice had built a 10-1 advantage behind another Landry home run. Jeff Shaddix finished up the 10-5 victory.
"Onley and Bess are talents," Graham said. "As long as they keep working, they are going to keep getting better, because they have the talent to beat anybody if they throw their pitches well. Anderson also pitched well. We got three guys, who, if they keep refining their pitches, can beat anybody -- that's what really gives us as much hope as anything else."
Both starting pitching and timely hitting deserted the Owls on Sunday, when the Red Raiders rebounded with an 8-1 victory. Shaddix was not able to follow the trend set by Onley and Bess --he allowed the leadoff man to reach base in each of the first four innings, and ended up surrendering six runs.
On the other side of the ball, Rice was unable to get any offense going against Matt Miller. Shutting down Owl bats with off-speed pitching, Miller held Rice scoreless until two outs in the ninth inning, when Landry's third home run of the weekend saved the Owls from being shutout for the second Sunday in a row.
Although their conference record is far below what they hoped, Rice has a chance to reach their goal of an NCAA regional berth. The Owls have ten SWC games left -- all winnable, provided that Rice plays as well as they did earlier in the year and in the doubleheader with Texas Tech.
Eight wins would allow the Owls to break even in the conference and give them enough overall victories to be considered for a regional bid.
"It would be ideal to win eight of ten," Graham said. "That would place us in a position that if we did just decent in the conference tournament, we would get to a regional, since we would have a lot of wins. Otherwise, if we don't win eight out of ten, we're going to have to win the conference tournament to get a regional bid."
The Owls take a break from SWC play this weekend when they host Dallas Baptist tonight at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m. It's not really a break in the schedule -- the Patriots are the top-ranked NAIA squad in the country and they defeated Texas A&M twice last weekend in College Station.
"We should be ready, since they are No. 1 in the nation," Cathey said. "When we played them last year, it was almost like playing a conference game because of the talent level. If we don't get up for them, they'll beat us two straight."
"Dallas Baptist is certainly a great team," Graham said. "It's a great opportunity for us to see if we can play some good baseball. We're going to approach it like we really need to get our game together."
This item appeared in the Sports section of the April 12, 1996 issue.
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