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Rice University Athletics
Texans Keep Ozougwu at Home
4/30/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
April 30, 2011
Rice senior defensive end Cheta Ozougwu's goal of earning a chance to extend his career at the professional level took a little longer than he might have hoped, but it became a reality when the Houston Texans selected him with the final pick of the NFL's 2011 Draft on Saturday.
A total of 253 players were picked in the league's annual selection process before the Houston native found that he would begin his professional career in familiar surroundings and six years after first decided to start playing football.
In only his second year of playing football, Ozougwu earned a scholarship to Rice after earning All-District 18-5A and All-Greater Houston honors in 2006 for coach Tom Gerber as a senior at Alief Taylor High in suburban southwest Houston. He became a starter in college by the fifth game of his freshman year and eventually became an all-conference performer and an NFL draft selection.
Ozougwu was named the co-winner of the George Martin Award as Rice's MVP and earned All C-USA honors as a senior, despite facing additional focus due to the loss of preseason All-CUSA pick Scott Solomon from the Owls defensive line before the start of the year. Ozougwu finished the year with 54 tackles and ranked among the league leaders with three forced fumbles. He totaled three sacks on the season, but lost two others when fumbles he forced while stripping the ball from the quarterback were recovered without a loss of yardage. He was also credited with 11 quarterback hurries.
He topped 100 career yards lost on tackles behind the line, finishing with 26 TFLs for 103 yards lost. He had 11 career sacks, for a total of 72 yards. In his junior season, he set career-highs for tackles (61), TFL (10.5) and sacks (4.5) and ranked second among C-USA defensive linemen with 61 total tackles.
Ozougwu, who will graduate from Rice on May 14 with a degree in Economics, was also a standout in the classroom. He was named to the ESPN Academic All-District VI Football Team with a cumulative 3.41 GPA. He was Rice's honoree for the fall C-USA Spirit of Service awards and was Rice's nominee for the AFCA Good Works Team. He was one of 30 candidates for the 2010 Lowe's Senior and was named to the 2010 Arthur Ashe Sports Scholar Awards second team.
