FAU Draws The Curtain on Rice's TIme in C-USA

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Baseball

vs McClennan JC

Oct 26

Noon

Reckling Park

Reckling Park: Florida Atlantic jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second and starter Hunter Cooley held Rice in check while tossing a complete game to end Rice's time as a member of Conference USA with a 6-1 win on Thursday.

The Details: FAU tagged Rice starter J.D. McCracken for four runs on four hits in the second and added two in the fourth. Rice threatened in the third after Pierce Gallo opened the inning with a single and Ben Dukes reached on an error, but Cooley worked out of the jam. Rice again put a pair of runners on in the sixth when Connor Walsh and Jack Riedel had back-to-back singles with one out, but failed to score. Cooley lost his bid for a shutout in the ninth when Manny Garza doubled with one out and after a strikeout, Guy Garibay Jr. singled home Christian Salazar who had come in to run for Garza.

Notes

Rice concluded play in the Conference USA Championship with a 38-18 in the C-USA tourney (8-2 in tournament games at Reckling).
The game was completed in 1:59, the shortest nine-inning game for Rice in 56 games at the Conference USA Championship. Rice defeated Marshall 13-0 in 1:54 in a game shortened to seven innings in 2009. It was the quickest postseason game for Rice since it needed 1:53 to defeat Prairie View at the 2012 NCAA Regional at Reckling Park.
The Owls were swept in the tournament for only the third time in 15 appearances (2008m 2015).
Walsh was 3x8 in the tournament and closed the season by hitting the game 2x4. He is hitting .351 (13x37) over his last 11 games with three homers and 11 RBI
Garibay's RBI was his 12^th in his last 15 games to give him a career-high 35 this year.
Manny Garza threw out a pair of base runners and finished the season with a .468 success rate (22/47, the highest percentage since Geoff Perrott finished at .491 in 2013 (28/57).
Garza closed the year hitting .328 over his last 24 games (31x94).
Justin Long worked a pair of scoreless innings with three strikeouts and closed the year by striking out 14 over his last 12.1 innings.
Matthew Linskey pitched a scoreless ninth Rice and ended the season with career-highs in innings (43.2) and strikeouts (56).

Up Next: Rice baseball will open return to practice in the fall of 2023 to begin preparations for its first season of baseball in the American Athletic Conference in February of 2024.

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