Owls Face #13 East Carolina Looking to Extend Season

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Baseball

at Louisiana

Oct 11

1 PM

Baseball

vs McClennan JC

Oct 26

Noon

Reckling Park

Rice closes out its 2024 regular season campaign on the road with three games against AAC leader #13 East Carolina, looking to clinch on of the eight slots in the AAC Championship next week in Clearwater, Florida. The series opens on Thursday at 5 p.m., followed by another 5 p.m. game on Friday before wrapping up with a noon start on Saturday.

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Listen: Online / Varsity Network
Live Stats: Statbroadcast
Full Game Notes: RiceOwls.com

On the Air
J.P. Heath returns for his 16th season behind the mic calling Rice baseball and will have the call from Greenville

Breaking it Down
Rice is in a four-way for fifth in the race to advance to postseason action. The Owls are tied with Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, and UAB with 11-13 records and they hold the tiebreaker against FAU and UAB after winning the regular season series against each. Rice also owns the tiebreaker over USF (10-14) but Memphis (9-15) owns the tiebreaker over Rice.

Pitching Matchups

Game One: RHP Parker Smith (4-4, 4.10 ERA/1.49) vs. RHP Trey Yesavage (10-1, 2.13/0.92)
Game Two: LHP J.D. McCracken (4-6, 5.32/1.80) vs. TBA
Game Three: RHP Tucker Alch (1-3, 2.72/1.36) vs. TBA

Rice Recently

After opening its first AAC season 1-8 through the first three weeks of conference action, Rice has gone 10-5 while winning four of the last five series.
The Owls' 10-5 record is tied with East Carolina and Tulane for the best AAC record over the last five weekends, followed by UAB, UTSA, and Wichita State (8-7), Charlotte (7-8), FAU (6-9), and Memphis and USF (4-11).
Rice captured its fourth conference last weekend by taking two of three against FAU, the most conference series wins for the Owls since 2019 when they captured four CUSA weekend series.
The Owls have posted a 13-7 overall record over the last 20 games while hitting .288 (200x695) with 26 homers, the pitching staff posting a combined 4.70 ERA and .257 opponents' batting average, and the defense has fielding at a .980 clip. In the first 33 games of the year, the Owls were 9-24 and hitting .223 with 20 homers, a staff ERA of 5.50, and a fielding percentage of .968.

Power Plant
Jack Riedel's 15 home runs this year are the most by an Owl since the NCAA revised the standards for bats after the 2010 season. Anthony Rendon led the Owls with 26 home runs on his way to earning national Player of the Year honors in 2010 while Rick Hague was second with 16. He hit 10 homers at Reckling, the most since Rendon hit 11 at home in 2010. Riedel moved to within three of matching Mark Quinn's 1995 total of 18 as the 10th-best single-season mark in school history. Quinn smashed 18 homers in 1995 as a teammate of current Owls' head coach Jose Cruz Jr.

Close Calls
The Owls are 7-4 in their last 11 games decided in two runs or less after going 2-10 to start the season… The Owls split a pair of 15-inning games, both by 4-3 scores in a matter of eight days at home, losing to Memphis and defeating UAB… Rice has not played multiple games of 15 innings or more since 2013.

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