Baseball goes 2-2 at First Pitch
In the aftermath of its Southwest Conference season-opening First Pitch Tournament, the baseball team can view its situation as half-empty or half-full.
If they choose to look at the empty half, the Owls can dwell on their games with Texas Tech University and Texas Christian University.
A pair of soggy losses painfully exposed the shortcomings that they had been able to overlook during their non-conference schedule earlier this season.
If they wish to see the full half, the team can look back on sharp victories over the University of Houston and Texas A&M University, take into account that their loss to Texas Tech came against a team ranked third in the nation by USA Today/Baseball Weekly and realize that they are still in the middle of the SWC race.
Only the Red Raiders escaped the weekend with a 3-1 record; five other teams, including Rice, were tied at 2-2.
The Owls, who stand at 22-6 on the season after an 8-6 loss to McNeese State University on Wednesday, prefer the latter interpretation of their weekend.
"I think that in the two games we played bad and lost, we made a lot of mistakes we can learn from," catcher Tim McLaughlin said. "That showed in the Sunday game that we won [against Texas A&M]. I think that will carry over into conference and give us a little momentum."
Head Coach Wayne Graham agreed.
"We basically came out of the tournament without losing anything," he said. "If we had gone 1-3, we would have had a long way back, but 2-2 you basically come out of the tournament without gaining or losing anything. We beat the same exact teams and lost to the same exact teams last year."
The national polls saw Rice's performance less positively. The Owls dropped to 11th in USA Today/Baseball Weekly , 17th in Collegiate Baseball and 18th in Baseball America .
Rice's success in the First Pitch Tournament was closely correlated with that of its starting pitchers.
In the two losses, the Owls received poor starts: Matt Anderson surrendered four home runs and squandered an early 4-1 lead into a 14-8 loss against Texas Tech on Friday and Steven Bess allowed eight runs before being pulled from the game after only 1.1 innings in Rice's 12-7 loss to TCU the following night.
"Anderson's on his way to being a good starting pitcher," Graham said. "Within the next few weeks, he will hit his stride. He's got the stuff; he's just got to take a little jump.
"Bess' poor performance shocked us. We just expected a lot more out of him. The key to our losses was just poor starting pitching."
In their victories, on the other hand, Rice's starters dominated opposing batters.
For the first six innings on Thursday, Shawn Onley shut down Houston's offense almost completely. He tired in the seventh but was still able to improve his record to 5-0 in the Owls' 9-3 victory.
Jeff Shaddix followed the dreadful games against the Red Raiders and Horned Frogs by coming out of the bullpen for a spot start and holding the Aggies to two runs in seven innings in Rice's 6-2 triumph.
"Shaddix was marvelous," Graham said. "We found out last year what kind of character he had at Baton Rouge [in the NCAA Regional Tournament], and he showed it again here."
This weekend, Rice travels to Fort Worth for a three-game series with TCU. Rice will be looking to avenge last weekend's loss to a TCU squad that it had expected to defeat.
"We want to come back and at least take two of three, if not three of three to take the conference series and jump ahead of them for good in the conference race," McLaughlin said.
Graham admits that the Owls will be looking for a little revenge.
"In this conference, you want to win every game," he said. "Certainly, they got our attention, and certainly, we'll be ready to play."
This item appeared in the Sports section of the March 22, 1996 issue.
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