Owls Take on North Texas Tuesday
11/22/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 22, 2010
Rice University plays its third game in six days when the Owls travel to North Texas on Tuesday. Tip-off for the intastate battle is 7 p.m. from The Super Pit on the UNT campus and the game will be broadcast locally in Houston on ESPN 97.5 and through RiceOwls.com.
Rice will be at full strength with the return of junior guard Connor Frizzelle. In Sunday's game against Saint Gregory's, Frizzelle was fouled in the opening minute and came down hard hitting his head on the hardwood. He had to be assisted by teammates to the locker room.
Frizzelle underwent tests conducted by the Rice medical staff Monday morning and has been cleared to play. He was averaging 13.3 points per game heading into the week and has started the last two games for the Owls.
Rice is 3-1 this season. The Owls' only loss was the team's first road game of the year, a 66-65 setback last Thursday at Santa Clara.
North Texas, picked to repeat as the Sun Belt Conference West Division champions, is 2-1. The Mean Green defeated Texas Tech 92-83 in overtime last week before losing to Kansas on the road, 90-63.
Rice has had success on the road against the Sun Belt Conference. The team last played a Sun Belt team during the 2008-09 season, beating UALR 79-72 in Little Rock, Ark.
While North Texas holds a 7-2 edge in its series with Rice, the last four meetings have each been decided by two points. UNT won in Houston last year, 64-62 for its third straight victory in the series. Tuesday's game will be the first time the series has been played in Denton since 1996.
Dominique Johnson came off the bench to score 15 points in last year's win while Josh White made six free throws in the game's final two minutes, was 9-for-9 from the line for the game and finished with 14 points.
Back for his senior year, White leads North Texas with a 17.0 scoring average. He had 32 points in the Mean Green's win over Texas Tech last week.
Johnson comes off the bench to average 14.7 points this season. He has connected on 53.3 percent of his three-point attempts (8-of-15). Senior forward George Odufuwa averages 9.7 points and 10.0 rebounds for UNT. He was one of 20 players in the nation last year to average a double-double.
Rice has its own double-double producing player.
In the past week, Rice sophomore forward Arsalan Kazemi has eclipsed his career rebounding high and equaled his scoring high from his rookie season.
In last week's game against Santa Clara, Kazemi scored 17 points and set a new career high with 16 rebounds en route to his third straight double-double. Against Saint Gregory's on Sunday, Kazemi scored 19 points to equal a career high from last year.
For the season, the native of Esfahan, Iran, is averaging 15.3 points and leads Conference USA with a 12.0 rebounding average.
Since scoring five points in the season opener, sophomore guard Tamir Jackson has scored in double figures each of the Owls' last three games. He enters the North Texas game averaging 12.8 points. He ranks second on the team with 10 assists.
Following Tuesday's game, the Owls are back on the road Saturday playing at Texas. With the overlap of football and basketball, the Texas game will be broadcast locally in Houston on 1560 The Game. Tip-off for Saturday's contest is 3 p.m.
