Women’s basketball falls at Houston, Marshall
The women’s basketball team opened its inaugural season in Conference USA with two home wins, but the Owls (6-9, 2-2 C-USA) fell into a tie for sixth place in the conference with consecutive losses to C-USA co-leaders Marshall University (9-5, 4-0) and the University of Houston (7-8, 4-0) last weekend. Before the season, C-USA coaches picked Rice to win the conference title, and head coach Greg Williams (Hanszen ‘70) said he thinks that is still feasible.
“Our two losses were on the road to the only undefeated teams in the conference,” Williams said. “Hopefully we can get some wins on the road and win all our home games. We don’t play Marshall again, but we see Houston again Feb. 3, and we hope that’s an important game.”
The Owls’ road trip continues this weekend when they play the University of Tulsa (12-4, 3-2) tonight at 7 p.m. and Southern Methodist University (8-9, 3-2) Sunday at 2 p.m. Tulsa, which like Rice has a new coach this season, went 9-2 in its non-conference games, including wins at Arkansas and at Oklahoma State and at home against Florida State. But the Golden Hurricane dropped games at Texas-El Paso and at home versus Alabama-Birmingham, leaving them a half game ahead of the Owls in the conference standings.
“Tulsa definitely had the best pre-conference record and performance of any team in our league,” Williams said. “They’ve dropped a couple of close games recently, but they’re a very good team.”
Tulsa has advanced to the Women’s National Invitation Tournament for the past two seasons. Jillian Robbins leads the Golden Hurricane and C-USA with 18 points and 15 rebounds per game. However, Rice has better interior depth than the Golden Hurricane — junior Lauren Neaves, sophomore Valeriya Berezhynska, sophomore Tiffany Loggins and senior Catherine DuPont all average at least 10 minutes per game.
SMU has had a less impressive season than has Tulsa, but the Mustangs and the Owls have had a competitive rivalry of late. The visiting team has won just one of the last eight games between the two teams, when Rice pulled out a victory at Moody Coliseum two years ago. Sunday’s SMU game will be the last of the Owls’ four consecutive road games against four of the top five teams in the current conference standings.
“When we faced the four on the road, I had hoped to split them — if you can do that all season, you’ll be very successful,” Williams said. “Now, in order to get that split, we have to win the games this weekend. We’re capable of doing that, but it will be very difficult.”
But Rice’s difficult schedule does not end this weekend. C-USA, like other 12-team conferences, is too small for a single round-robin and too large to play every team twice, so the Owls will play teams in the western half of the conference twice and teams in the eastern half just once. In terms of RPI, six of the conference’s top nine teams are in the western half.
“Because we play the unbalanced schedule, Marshall is only going to have to play 6 of 16 games against our side,” Williams said. “I could easily see them sweeping their 10 games on the east side, and then if they split their games on the west, that gives them 13 conference wins. If they can do it, I think that wins the conference.”
Last Sunday against UH, neither team led by more than four points until four minutes into the second half, when three three-pointers from Sha’Ratta Hawkins in less than a minute gave the Cougars a 10-point lead. The game featured a match-up of two quick, smooth-shooting guards, but in the end UH’s Tye Jackson got the better of junior guard Krystal Frazier, scoring a career-high 37 points to Frazier’s 23.
“On defense, our game plan was to limit [Jackson’s] touches, and we let her catch the ball too many times, too easily,” Williams said. “We’ll try to make some adjustments when they come to Rice, but our best defender is Krystal Frazier — I’ve never seen anybody do that to Krystal. We didn’t get enough help for her.”
Jackson frequently created her own shots, scoring 14 of the Cougars’ 28 baskets, which remarkably came on just four assists.
Before the game against UH, Rice tallied conference wins at home against Southern Miss and Central Florida before surrendering a 16-point lead on the way to a loss at Marshall.
In non-conference action over winter break, the Owls recorded wins against Davidson and Loyola Marymount but lost games against Louisiana Tech, Stanford, Wake Forest, Marquette and Texas A&M.
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