Men’s basketball’s streak hits 13 in a row
The first one is always the hardest. For the men’s basketball team, the first win of 2008 will have to come another day. Winless since early December, Rice (3-20, 0-10 Conference USA) dropped a 69-60 contest against the University of Alabama-Birmingham Wednesday at Reliant Arena. The loss pushed Rice’s season-long losing streak to an abysmal 13 games.
Leading the way for the Owls in defeat was senior forward Patrick Britton, who scored 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Since UAB (17-7, 7-2 C-USA) was playing without Robert Vaden, the conference’s fourth-leading scorer, the Blazers rode point guard Ed Berrios’s 15 points and five assists to the win.
Rice returns to action tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. against the University of Central Florida at Reliant Arena. The Golden Knights (12-11, 5-4 C-USA) boast the conference’s second-leading scorer — junior guard Jermaine Taylor, who is averaging 21.7 points a game. This is the two squads’ first meeting of the year. Last season, Rice avenged a home defeat to UCF with a tight 53-51 win in the quarterfinals of the C-USA tournament, but that Rice squad was nothing like this year’s group — not only did the Owls lose Morris Almond (Martel ‘07) and Lorenzo Williams to the NBA and the NBDL, respectively, but the team has been decimated by injuries nearly all season.
If they hope to break the losing streak, the Owls will need to get out to a quicker start than they did Wednesday. UAB jumped out to a quick 12-2 lead but fell prey to a pair of deep three-point shots from walk-on junior guard Chris Szalay, who helped Rice cut the lead to just 23-20 midway through the first half. Before they could get any closer, however, the Owls went cold from the field and the Blazers closed the half with a solid 40-31 lead.
“The first four minutes [of the half] we were pretty lethargic,” junior guard Rodney Foster said. “After the first timeout we came together and brought the energy level up.”
Despite their slow play going into halftime, the Owls came out quickly to start the second half. Sophomore guard Lawrence Ghoram scored six points in under two minutes to cut UAB’s lead to 40-37 and bring Rice back into the game.
After a back-and-forth stretch, Rice finally pulled into the lead when a Ghoram jumper made it 54-53 with 6:38 to go. A UAB basket just nine seconds later, however, erased that lead for good. Two missed free throws by freshman center Scott Saunders, as well as sloppy defense and weak rebounding by the Owls, allowed the Blazers to go on a 10-0 tear over the next five minutes that all but secured them the win.
Despite the nine-point deficit, head coach Willis Wilson (Will Rice ‘82) said he thinks the Owls are coming closer to finally breaking through and winning their first game in nearly two months.
“We’re putting ourselves in position to win,” Wilson said. “We were in control of the game. … Now we just need to convert.”
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