AJ on the court for final pre-game warmups. Assuming he plays, I suspect he'll be quite rusty, having not played in over a month, but it will be great to get him back on the court.

UTEP getting inside early-- 3 layups and 2 missed lay ups. UTEP leads 9-8, with Mencey 2-3 from downtown.

AJ finally finds his stroke. Two quick 3s give Rice a 24-21 lead with 3:55 left in the first half.

Rice is ahead 31-29 at halftime thanks to Cashaw's steal of a Miner pass and coast-to-coast contested layup just before the buzzer.

Down by 11, 54-65 with 5:00 left. Been holding within about that since a quick UTEP run at start of 2H

Good news: 9/11 on FT so far tonight. Bad news: those last two FT only got us to within 56-70

Also a slight gap from beyond the arc. UTEP 61% and Rice 24%. Two more made for the Miners and one more missed for the Owls and it’s 56-76.

UTEP just 50% from the line though. (6/12) Too bad FTs don’t count for 3 and long FGs don’t count for 1.

Game over. Your final from El Paso: Rice 62, UTEP 80.
Good first half. Glad we got AJ back and finally had a good FT shooting game.

UTEP shot 65% from the floor in the 2nd half. What happened to our defense? And, once again (it seems like we do this every single game) we went ice cold for nearly a 10-minute period in the 2nd half when UTEP went on a 19 - 4 run to put the game away. We were leading 39 - 33 before the run began.

Still no improvement. Disheartening. WE CANNOT HIT THREES. Do something different with more motion and off ball screens

Connor Cashaw is a legitimate Division I basketball player.

(12-30-2017 11:17 PM)owlatheart Wrote:  Still no improvement. Disheartening. WE CANNOT HIT THREES. Do something different with more motion and off ball screens

The motto of this coaching staff seems to be “the threes will continue until morale improves”. Square pegs, round holes.