Cougars Hold Off Owls to Retain Silver Glove

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Baseball

at Louisiana

Oct 11

1 PM

Baseball

vs McClennan JC

Oct 26

Noon

Reckling Park

Reckling Park: Houston held off a furious ninth-inning rally by Rice to take a 4-2 victory and retain possession of the Silver Glove on Wednesday night.

The Details: The Owls and Cougars were tied 1-1 through six innings before Houston scored once in the top of the seventh and twice more in the eighth. Rice cut the lead to 4-2 with a run of their own in the bottom of the eighth and then loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the ninth before a game-ending double play spoiled the Owls' hopes. Tucker Alch started the game for Rice and worked two crisp innings, working around a pair of hits. Jack Ben-Shoshan followed with two innings for his longest outing of the season but surrendered the game's first run. Mauricio Rodriguez worked a scoreless fifth inning, setting the stage for the Owls to tie it in the bottom half of the inning. Kyte McDonald led off the inning with a double in the left field corner and walks to Treyton Rank and Nathan Becker loaded the bases with one out. Manny Garza lofted a deep fly ball to the warning track in left-center that scored McDonald to tie the game 1-1. After Houston moved out to a 4-1 lead in the eighth, Tobias Motley and Pierce Gallo singled with one out and moved up to second and third on a wild pitch. McDonald grounded out allowing Motley to score and cut the lead to 4-2. Rank opened the ninth with a single and Becker followed with a walk. Garza sacrificed them into scoring position and a walk to pinch hitter Ben Dukes loaded the bases with one out, but Brendan Cumming's sharp grounder was turned into an game-ending double play.

Up Next: The attention turns to the inaugural AAC series this weekend as Rice and Tulane resume their long rivalry for the first time since 2014. The series opens at Reckling Park at 6:30 on Friday night, followed by day games at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Notes:

Rice fell to 8-13, 5-8 at home, 110-89 vs. Houston, and 62-35 in the Silver Glove series.
Houston came into the series hitting .291 as a team through its first 18 games, but Owls pitchers held them to a .222 average in the two games (18x63).
McDonald scored one of the Owls' runs and drove in the other. His leadoff triple in the seventh was his second of the year to match his career high set last year with Wichita State. He has already set a career-high with three home runs.
Jack Riedel's walk in the third inning extended his on-base streak to 14 games, while Becker's two walks extended his streak to 11n and his season total to 20, just five shy of his career-high set in 2022.
Rank's single in the ninth extended his hitting streak to seven games, one shy of his career-high of eight set last year at Florida State.
Tobias Motley's single in the eighth gave him a hit in five of his first six starts.
Karl Ralamb was charged with the loss but struck out a career-high four in 1.2 innings.

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