Rice's Lady Owls won their conference opener tonight 59-41 over FIU. Jessica Kuster had 20 points and 15 boards for her 53rd double double. They are now 8-6 for the season, 1-0 in conference.

(01-08-2014 07:48 PM)bobreinhold1 Wrote:  Rice's Lady Owls won their conference opener tonight 59-41 over FIU. Jessica Kuster had 20 points and 15 boards for her 53rd double double. They are now 8-6 for the season, 1-0 in conference.

huge win for the owls! Limited Coley[ nations second leading scorer] to season low 16 points. A road win to begin conference with FAU up on Saturday. Rice fight never dies!

The women are improving, which is nice to see. If the two freshmen (Goodwine and Hawkins) keep getting better, I could see them both starting before long. The women's conference is a bit stronger than the men, which might make it tough for the women to finish with a great record.

The women's team continues to shine, both the players and the coaches. Can't say the same for the men's team, which finished the 2013 season unranked for the first time in years. The new ITA rankings just came out to start the 2014 season on Jan 2 and Rice Mens is unranked in team, doubles and has no ranked singles players. The line-up has a new recruit from Switzerland that has no junior ranking history at all, which clearly won't help the line-up. Several of the other team players continue to have losing records in the fall as well. Last year the new coach's recruiting did not fill the line-up and he had to move up a player from the Rice club team.

The new coach this fall stated that the fall schedule with an emphasis on low level pro tournaments (which included sending one player to a tournament in Sweden who did not win a round there) was designed to position his players to shine at regionals. That did not pan out when all his players lost in early rounds, which contributed to the team starting the season without a ranking. The whole strategy and direction of mens tennis is baffling.