Sports
 

UH not ready for No. 1 Owls 

Rice handles Cougars despite Bruce's big day; Noble blames loss on poor pitching

By Tom Carpenter
The Daily Cougar

The scowl on the face of UH baseball head coach Rayner Noble was clearly visible when he stepped out from the visitors' locker room at Reckling Stadium on Tuesday evening.

In spite of a 4-4 night with a home run and two RBIs from UH second baseman Cole Bruce, the No. 1 ranked and defending national champion Rice Owls took advantage of shoddy pitching and costly errors to hammer the Cougars 8-4 in the opening salvo of the 2004 Silver Glove Series.

Noble's assessment of the game was succinct.

. "We've got to start getting our act together on the mound," Noble said. "We pitched poorly. When you pitch poorly you're not going to win many games."

"It's awful," Noble said. "We did that against Texas Tech. You are not going to do well when you give up three base runners to a quality team."

The defending national champion and No. 1 ranked Owls epitomize quality baseball. The Cougars stand 3-11 against the Owls since 2002, and the Owls knocked the Cougars out of a trip to Omaha in 2003.

Houston's starting pitcher for the game, junior Garrett Mock, cruised into the fifth inning with a 3-2 lead.

But Rice (3-1) used three walks, a hit batter and a misplayed ball in centerfield to scratch out four runs in the fifth inning to take command of the game.

A bad-hop single turned into a leadoff triple for the Owls' Austin Davis. A walk and a hit batter loaded the bases and the Owls' Adam Rodgers walked to force in the tying run. Rice took the lead for good when Adam Morris was walked to force in another run. 

A single, a Cougar error and a Morris home run gave Rice a 7-3 lead. 

When the Cougars threatened with base runners in the eighth, Rice head coach Wayne Graham called on his ace pitcher, Wade Townsend, to shut down the Cougars.

Townsend fired three 90-plus mph fastballs past Cougar third baseman Nick Bott to end the eighth and then pitched a three-up, three-down ninth to preserve the win.

The Cougars fell to 1-3 on the young season and find themselves mired in a three-game losing streak. It's no consolation to Noble that the losses were to No. 1 Rice, No. 4 Texas and the 5-1 Red Raiders.

"We're still gathering information on players," Noble said. "Sometimes that's a hard process to go through, especially when you're just giving thing away. I guess that's the frustrating part of it."

Rice starter Josh Baker allowed three runs off eight hits in seven innings of work to raise his record to 2-0. Teammate Chris Kolkhorst went 5-5 with a run scored, a double and two RBIs, including an RBI single in the fifth that led to two errors and two runs scored.

Houston out-hit Rice 10-8, but the costly errors and pitching breakdown put the game out of reach.

"I don't know if I'm seeing what I really need to see out of guys," Noble said. "We'll make an adjustment and we'll put the best defensive players on the field, no doubt."

The Cougars open the 2004 home season at 7 p.m. Friday when No. 14 Cal State Fullerton visits Cougar Field for a three-game non-conference series. 

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