(03-26-2020 01:45 PM)ruowls Wrote:  

(03-25-2020 05:38 PM)Jonathan Sadow Wrote:  

(03-25-2020 01:37 AM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(03-24-2020 11:37 PM)owl40 Wrote:  To date, over 100 replies and nearly 5K views and only one mention of any Rice sports memory in the past decade (and that was down on a long list of things) even worthy of mention.

If I lived in Houston, I could imagine that watching Erica Ogwumike would likely have been a Top 10 experience. Like watching Anthony Rendon ... not a single play or game, but rather their entire Rice career.

But I guess that the resent-highlight drought you lament comes from the combination of 1) fewer single, impressive really-mattered games in the past decade ... and 2) that I suspect many of us more-active Parliamentarians skew toward Reinhold-territory and saw so many significant and stirring contests/wins in those long-ago days.

And while "a C-USA championship in any sport" may not make any "any 'all-time best' list" for you, I'd hope that it would for current students and young alums. It's a start ... and Rice athletics needs to be impressive and successful every year.

Correct - as I don't live in the Houston area, I rarely get to see Rice games in person these days, and I only count events I see in person. In that vein…

(03-25-2020 08:36 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I have lots of good memories about Rice athletics, from 1963 to 2019. I must say the best is watching Anthony Rendon play. Any play, any game.

… let me provide my favorite Anthony Rendon moment. In 2011, the Owls played two midweek games against the University of Arizona in Tucson. The Tucson area is great for both hiking and birding, so I resolved to spend some time in the southeast Arizona area and catch the games while doing these other activities (an account of which can be found deep in The Parliament archives). In the second game, Rendon came to the plate with a couple of teammates on. It was a long at-bat, with lots of pitches, and it soon became apparent why. After a few pitches, Rendon had figured out that the pitcher wasn't going to beat him with the assortment of pitches he'd thrown. At this point, Rendon was simply fouling off any pitch near the strike zone and waiting for a pitch he could drive. That came after about eight pitches, when he smacked a pitch into the right-field corner for a 2-RBI double. It was an entirely clinical at-bat. If you didn't realize it before then, you knew now that this was a ballplayer.

I remember watching another memorable at bat in 1999 on TV but was none the less memorable.
The Alabama-Rice CWS elimination game. Alabama was up 4-1 when Damon Thames hit a HR in the 7th to make it 4-2. He then came up in the 8th with 2 runners on base. He foulded off 3 pitches then hit one off the foul pole in left to put Rice up 5-4. It was epic. Unfortunately, Alabama scored 1 in the 8th and 9th to eliminate Rice, 6-5. But the battle in the 8th with Thames' second HR in 2 innings to take the lead coming after 3 consecutive foul balls was something to watch.

I remember following that game on KTRU at my office. Those last two innings were crushing!