Owls Host Lamar Friday Night At 7 PM
9/27/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
Sept. 27, 2007
THIS WEEK: The Rice soccer team (5-3-1) is back on campus to begin a four-game homestand starting this week. The Owls take on Lamar on Friday (Sept. 28) evening at the Rice Soccer Stadium. Start time with the Cardinals is set for 7 pm.
LIVE IN-GAME STATS: Live in-game statistics for Rice matches will be posted on the world-wide web. At the start of the game go to the respective live stats links at the top of this page.
QUICK ON THE OWLS: Rice is 5-3-1 to start the season. The Owls have defeated state-rivals TCU, Stephen F. Austin and Texas State. The team's only losses have all been on the road to fourth-ranked Texas A&M and to SEC powers Mississippi and Mississippi State... The Blue & Gray average 17.2 shots per game and the team has maintained a .458 shots-on-goal percentage... Senior co-captain Beth Martin was selected to the Conference USA all-preseason team on a vote of the league's head coaches. Rice has five starters back from its 2006 team that finished with a winning 11-6-1 record, but the team is fighting through a number of individual injuries to key personnel.
HEAD COACH CHRIS HUSTON: Now in her seventh season at the helm of the Rice soccer program she started from scratch, Chris Huston has guided the Owls to an established spot alongside the more experienced teams in the state of Texas and the NCAA. Her won-loss record at Rice is 65-51-9. The two-time Western Athletic Conference coach of the year owns a career college coaching record of 87-67-11. The former standout at the University of North Carolina served as the head coach at the University of Houston for two years after starting that program in 1998. Huston owns a career C-USA regular season record of 25-13-2. She is aided by assistant coaches Nicky Adams (Texas A&M, 2001; fifth year), Justin Zoslow (Vanderbilt, 1986; fourth year) and volunteer assistant coach Craig Waibel, a defender on the MLS champion Houston Dynamo.
THE SERIES: Longtime regional rivals in almost every sport, from baseball to volleyball and from men's and women's basketball to tennis (and even football once upon a time), Rice and Lamar are only now meeting on the soccer field for the first time. The delay in the soccer rivalry is that Rice did not start its soccer program until 2001 and Lamar didn't begin the sport until this season. In keeping with the tradition of fielding a brand new team, the Cardinals are loaded with true freshmen. Rice head coach Chris Huston knows all about the highs and lows of first-year programs. She's already started two college teams from scratch in her coaching career.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH: Seven different Rice players have scored goals so far. Through nine games, five different Owls have attempted 15 shots or more.
BIG CROWD: The Owls played before vocal crowd of 2,381 last Sunday night at Texas A&M, one of the largest crowds to see a C-USA team this season.
SCHUGART RETURNS: Rice is feeling an injury bug with a few key players on the sidelines, but the team welcomed the return of sophomore Kellen Schugart back to active duty after missing the first month of the season. Schugart played 13 minutes against a talented Texas A&M team in her first appearance of 2007.
THIS & THAT: True freshman Kate Edwards has scored goals in six of the team's last eight games. Her penalty kick won the TCU game (Sept. 7) in the 102nd minute to mark the first time in school history Rice had won an overtime game on a PK. Edwards is one of just five players in Rice soccer history to score a goal in three-straight games, and she's done it twice. The only other Owls to score goals in three-straight games are Erin Scott in 2006, Caitlin Robbins twice in 2005, Sarah Yoder in 2002 and Kelly Pottysman in 2002... True freshman Meghan Erkel has made 27 saves and maintained a 1.41 goals-against average. Erkel has started every game and played 764 of the team's 855 minutes (89.4 percent). She registered a complete game shut out against TCU.
DID YOU KNOW? C-USA play starts next week and it does not get much bigger than hosting the team's crosstown rival, the University of Houston. The Owls take on UH at home on Friday, Oct. 5, at 7 pm. Rice will give away free T-shirts to the first 200 fans and the event has been designated as "Camper Day." There is free admission for Rice Soccer campers wearing their camp T-shirt.
ELSEWHERE AROUND C-USA: There's a lot of interesting matchups in C-USA soccer this week. The league's composite schedule is as follows:
Friday, September 28
Marshall at Radford, 6 pm
Loyola College at UCF, 6 pm
Colorado College at TCU,7 pm
Texas-San Antonio at Houston, 7 pm
Lamar at Rice, 7 pm
Sam Houston State at SMU, 7 pm
UAB at Evansville, 7 pm
UTEP at Fresno State, 8 pm
Saturday, September 29
Francis Marion at East Carolina, 2 pm
Sunday, September 30
TCU at Houston (CSTV), 1 pm
Missouri State at Memphis, 1 pm
Tulsa at Northwestern State, 1 pm
UTEP at Sacramento State, 1 pm
Southeastern Louisiana at Southern Miss, 2 pm
