By the looks of the tweets and videos recently posted of Summer practice, it would appear everyone eligible is back. We already knew Adams was returning, but Alexis appears to be, as well, as she's participating in practice. Adams, Flores, Battiston and Alexis all return, along with all the non-graduating subs (save for Tweihaus, who we knew was in the portal). Great news. We need Hilberth to be healthy and play a solid post for us, and we need both Blackmon and Alexis to step up their games to offset the loss of Ennis. However, that's easily the best returning core in the conference.

(06-29-2026 07:16 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  By the looks of the tweets and videos recently posted of Summer practice, it would appear everyone eligible is back. We already knew Adams was returning, but Alexis appears to be, as well, as she's participating in practice. Adams, Flores, Battiston and Alexis all return, along with all the non-graduating subs (save for Tweihaus, who we knew was in the portal). Great news. We need Hilberth to be healthy and play a solid post for us, and we need both Blackmon and Alexis to step up their games to offset the loss of Ennis. However, that's easily the best returning core in the conference.

Love it.

I thought Adams wanted to transfer out her final year and entered the portal?

(06-30-2026 09:02 AM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(06-29-2026 07:16 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  By the looks of the tweets and videos recently posted of Summer practice, it would appear everyone eligible is back. We already knew Adams was returning, but Alexis appears to be, as well, as she's participating in practice. Adams, Flores, Battiston and Alexis all return, along with all the non-graduating subs (save for Tweihaus, who we knew was in the portal). Great news. We need Hilberth to be healthy and play a solid post for us, and we need both Blackmon and Alexis to step up their games to offset the loss of Ennis. However, that's easily the best returning core in the conference.

Love it.

(06-29-2026 07:16 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  However, that's easily the best returning core in the conference.

Good news.

(06-30-2026 10:38 AM)Texasowl Wrote:  I thought Adams wanted to transfer out her final year and entered the portal?

(06-30-2026 09:02 AM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(06-29-2026 07:16 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  By the looks of the tweets and videos recently posted of Summer practice, it would appear everyone eligible is back. We already knew Adams was returning, but Alexis appears to be, as well, as she's participating in practice. Adams, Flores, Battiston and Alexis all return, along with all the non-graduating subs (save for Tweihaus, who we knew was in the portal). Great news. We need Hilberth to be healthy and play a solid post for us, and we need both Blackmon and Alexis to step up their games to offset the loss of Ennis. However, that's easily the best returning core in the conference.

Love it.

From all the reports and news I heard she was pretty set on returning.

(06-30-2026 11:45 AM)dragon2owl Wrote:  

(06-30-2026 10:38 AM)Texasowl Wrote:  I thought Adams wanted to transfer out her final year and entered the portal?

(06-30-2026 09:02 AM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(06-29-2026 07:16 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  By the looks of the tweets and videos recently posted of Summer practice, it would appear everyone eligible is back. We already knew Adams was returning, but Alexis appears to be, as well, as she's participating in practice. Adams, Flores, Battiston and Alexis all return, along with all the non-graduating subs (save for Tweihaus, who we knew was in the portal). Great news. We need Hilberth to be healthy and play a solid post for us, and we need both Blackmon and Alexis to step up their games to offset the loss of Ennis. However, that's easily the best returning core in the conference.

Love it.

From all the reports and news I heard she was pretty set on returning.

She even posted on twitter a couple weeks after the season ended that she would be returning. However, she was telling everyone even during the season she was planning on returning. I think the only way she was going to enter the portal was if Edmonds left.

Great news but we need Hilberth and Hazelton to step up and be more aggressive in rebounding and shooting.

The women got their first class of 2027 commitment yesterday in 5-8 guard Saania Khajawa (from Austin Vandergrift). The only video of her I saw on Hudl was pretty poor quality so it’s tough to say for sure but she sort of looks like an Ennis clone? She averaged almost 20 points a game last year for a 6A team that was undefeated in district play and advanced to the third round of the state playoffs I believe.

(07-02-2026 06:51 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  The women got their first class of 2027 commitment yesterday in 5-8 guard Saania Khajawa (from Austin Vandergrift). The only video of her I saw on Hudl was pretty poor quality so it’s tough to say for sure but she sort of looks like an Ennis clone? She averaged almost 20 points a game last year for a 6A team that was undefeated in district play and advanced to the third round of the state playoffs I believe.

She had offers from Old Dominion, Texas State, SFA, Boston U, Penn, New Mexico, San Jose State, Sacramento State, UIW, Kansas City, Quinnipiac, and Omaha.

There are some videos on her X. https://x.com/saaniakhawaja

The 2026-27 roster is now online. Jill Twiehaus is no longer listed on the roster but everyone else is. 14 players total.

(07-02-2026 10:13 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  The 2026-27 roster is now online. Jill Twiehaus is no longer listed on the roster but everyone else is. 14 players total.

Her Instagram indicates that she is going to Arkansas. No mention of playing basketball. Arkansas 26-27 roster currently does not list her.

(07-03-2026 08:41 AM)dragon2owl Wrote:  

(07-02-2026 10:13 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  The 2026-27 roster is now online. Jill Twiehaus is no longer listed on the roster but everyone else is. 14 players total.

Her Instagram indicates that she is going to Arkansas. No mention of playing basketball. Arkansas 26-27 roster currently does not list her.

Interesting, wonder what the story is there. She seemed like a developmental player to watch in her freshman year, but then she got less playing time as a sophomore.

https://riceowls.com/news/2026/7/9/women...g-alliance

Really exciting news. We will begin the 2026-27 season (?) with a great tournament at Richmond. We play Murray State (who was 31-4 last year and returns almost everybody) on Nov. 6 and then the host Richmond Spiders on the 8th. Great tournament that will get a lot of publicity and it’s really cool we are a part of it (USF is also in it which probably gets UTSA really mad).

Second class of 2027 commit is Malia Bellamy, a 6-2 forward from Maryland. We’ve had a recent Bellamy (India - I don’t think they are related as India was from Georgia) and we’ve had a recent Malia (Fisher). In looking at her videos, the new commit reminds me more of Bellamy than Malia.

Rice women will be hosting a tournament, The Rice Invitational, over Thanksgiving. Teams will include Rice, UTRGV, Lamar, and University of Illinois Chicago.
The Owls will face only UTRGV and Lamar.

Very underwhelming if you ask me.

Why such a crappy tournament?

(07-24-2026 11:50 AM)dragon2owl Wrote:  Rice women will be hosting a tournament, The Rice Invitational, over Thanksgiving. Teams will include Rice, UTRGV, Lamar, and University of Illinois Chicago.
The Owls will face only UTRGV and Lamar.

Very underwhelming if you ask me.

Very few teams like to schedule good mid-majors. Little upside for the bigger team. If you win, it's just what's supposed to happen. And you won't necessarily get the same bump in metrics as you would by beating a bad low-major/mid-major by 40. If you lose, it doesn't matter that a team like Rice actually has a good program, the news is "Big 12 team lost to a food." Plus if you're a power-conference team that might be on the bubble, that loss to a mid-major could be the difference between making the tournament and not. It all sucks, but Rice coaches have alluded to the scheduling difficulties on Twitter. Same things that High Point and Miami's coaches were talking about last year on the men's side...the bigger schools are looking to beat down on teams with NET rankings of like 275+. That's what's rewarded.

(07-25-2026 08:41 AM)elw4796 Wrote:  Very few teams like to schedule good mid-majors. Little upside for the bigger team. If you win, it's just what's supposed to happen. And you won't necessarily get the same bump in metrics as you would by beating a bad low-major/mid-major by 40. If you lose, it doesn't matter that a team like Rice actually has a good program, the news is "Big 12 team lost to a food." Plus if you're a power-conference team that might be on the bubble, that loss to a mid-major could be the difference between making the tournament and not. It all sucks, but Rice coaches have alluded to the scheduling difficulties on Twitter. Same things that High Point and Miami's coaches were talking about last year on the men's side...the bigger schools are looking to beat down on teams with NET rankings of like 275+. That's what's rewarded.

Can we leverage other sports scheduling to help the women? When we agreed to play ND this year in football, would it have been possible to add a visit to South Bend, too for women’s basketball? When we agree to schedule teams like Northwestern, Purdue and Harvard for early baseball games can we try to sweeten the deal with a women’s basketball game?

I feel like the only thing we can do is just play NC games at Texas and TAMU (although they have been bad the last few years). Home NC games against quality teams are only going to happen when a team has a star player from Houston that they are trying to get a senior home game for (like we had years ago when Brittany Griner played a December game for Baylor - which still may be one of our all time top 3 crowds).

When we played Louisiana Tech in the postseason last year, we should have tried to set up a home and home series with them. Maybe we did do that - I don’t know.

The bottom line is there aren’t many star HS girls basketball players from Houston anymore. Where did Shaquille O’Neal’s Daughter transfer to? That would be a school I would contact.

We should be hosting Princeton this year. And have a couple decent road meetings at UNLV and perhaps Middle Tennessee State. Houston is scared to play us since we have killed them the last few seasons. It will be a better NC schedule than last year. But probably just by a little bit only.

(07-25-2026 10:14 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Where did Shaquille O’Neal’s Daughter transfer to? That would be a school I would contact.

A 2024 McDonald's All-American, 6'4" Me'Arah O'Neal played her freshman and sophomore seasons as a Florida. She entered the transfer portal and committed to play for the University of Kentucky, which she will join as a junior in 2026-27.

She led Episcopal High School to the Southwest Preparatory Conference Class 4A Girls’ State Basketball title.

https://ukathletics.com/news/2026/06/10/...rah-oneal/

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-s...660016.php