'07 Texas game page
Just a little bit off...

Texas 58, Rice 14
Horns feast on Owls
Rice the perfect prescription
for Texas' return to wellville

Gary Anderson makes the play to bat down Texas passing attempt in the end zone (Mark Anderson photo)

AUSTIN (Sept. 23) – The Rice Owls proved to be the perfect get-well-quick pill for a previously- inconsistent Texas Longhorn team as the increasingly injury- hampered boys from South Main took it on the chin 58-14 from a Texas squad that vastly eclipsed the Owls in terms of sheer physical prowess.

The Flock battled the Longhorns on relatively equal terms for a quarter and a half, before Texas coaches discovered the Achilles Heel of the Rice defense and began riddling the Owl secondary with deep passes which turned into consistent big gainers, if not quick-strike scores.

But if the Owls had been able to turn a shocking early Texas turnover into six points, the outcome likely would have been put in doubt for much longer than that.

For on the second play of the game, vaunted Texas running back Jamaal Charles took a solid hit from Rice DE Dietrich Davis,  and the ball squirted free.

Frosh DB Josephy Leary grabbed the fumble in midair but was immediately tackled by UT receiver Limas Sweed. But that gave the Owls first and ten at the Texas 19 yard line, and brought the crowd of 84,500 to a hushed silence.

Unfortunately, the Owl offense immediately went backwards instead of goalward. Chase Clement failed to connect with Jarett Dillard on a deep post pattern on first down, and then two more plays wound up going 14 yards to the wrong direction.

From that point, Clark Fangmeier attempted a 50-yard field goal but it was just a little bit outside his range and pushed off to the left.

"You get a turnover right there at the beginning of the game, and momentum is kind of on our side," Rice quarterback Chase Clement said afterwards. "It was one of those deals where we needed to strike, make something happen, and come out showing that we're ready to play. Instead, that hurt not getting that in."

Such a golden opportunity wasn't to present itself again

Chase took a licking and kept on ticking (Mark Anderson photo)

Owl fans knew that golden opportunities like that don’t come along all that often, and they need to be exploited. This one wasn’t.

Texas immediately drove the ball the length of the field to go up, 7-0, although the Owls made them take 13 plays and five and a half minutes to get to the goal line.

Rice picked up a couple of first downs on their next possession, the first on a 20-yard completeion to Toren Dixon, and the second to 10-yard down-and-in to Jarett Dillard. But it became clear from the onset that there’d be no running game to speak of for the Owls this day.

Texas’ defensive strategy was very simple: it said, ‘we’re bigger, stronger and faster than you, so we’re pinning back our ears and coming right at ya.’ And that they did.

Consequently, slow-developing running plays were more often than not met by multiple orange-shirted defenders in the Rice backfield. Chase Clement’s time in the pocket was typically fleeting, before being forced to run for his life. And on that first possession, when the Flock was knocking on the door, the Owls couldn’t even get off a screen pass, as the UT front four blew in so fast that Chase was flagged for intentional grounding when he was forced to dump the ball.

Still, at the end of the first quarter the score stood only 10-0, and the Rice offense had shown at least some signs of life. In fact, Chase & Co. got as far as the Texas 44 yard line on their next possession before running into the proverbial brick wall trying to make progress on the ground.

Luke Juist, who had several booming punts and a consistently strong kickoff game, just, er, well, ah, he just kinda missed the next punt drop. Actually, it glanced off his shoe and went down in the books officially as a one-yard punt. But you’d miss, too, if you had several, 6-6, 360-pound behemoths – most of them with thick personnel files down at the police station – bearing down on you. 

That short punt, however, somehow appear to remind the Horns that they were Texas and that the Owls were, well, they were just Rass. UT set up camp at midfield, where, on the first play from scrimmage, wily receiver Limas Sweed caught the ball in the flat, put a move on the Rice defender and headed down the east sideline with apparently nothing but the corner flag ahead of him.

Limas’ attention span not being his strong suit, he absent-mindedly step out of bounds at the Rice two yard line. But Jamaal Charles scored on the next play, and the race was on.

Texas scored three TDs just like that

Patrick Randolph showed flashes of speed against Texas that may reap rewards against lesser teams (Mark Anderson photo)

Down 17-0, when the Rice defense stiffened momentarily, UT’s Ryan Bailey kicked a career-long 52-yard field goal to give Texas a 20-0 lead midway in the second quarter.

But seeing the ease in which Sweed had befuddled the Rice secondary, and the ample time in which Horn quarterback Colt McCoy had to set up in the pocket, UT offensive masterminds ordered ‘bombs away’ for the rest of the half. Texas immediately tacked three more touchdowns onto the scoreboard, two of them coming on one-play scoring drives of 52 and 24 yards, respectively – both TD receptions being hauled in by Limas Sweed.

The Owls did manage to hang six on the scoreboard right before the half, after Tyler Smith – that’s Quinton’s little brother – ripped off his redshirt and came in with a 42-yard kickoff return. After a roughing the passer penalty, Chase hit Tommy Henderson for three, Pat Randolph for 7, and capped the drive with a 17-yard scoring strike to Toren Dixon.

Frankly, the less said about the second half of the Rice-Texas game, the better. Suffice it to say that, with the game out of reach, both squads substituted freely, Texas for the experience of getting some of its younger athletes out on the field – but the Owls, in many cases, because of the increasing level of injuries that are sidelining feature players.

Rice’s lone scoring drive of the second half came after the Flock was already down 58-7. John Thomas Shepherd came in to direct the team and looked sharp, guiding the Owls 56 yards in eight plays. During that drive, Shep hit John Welch for three completions including a nifty 24-yarder that put the Owls at the lip of the cup, and also connected with TE Taylor Wardlow for 13 yards and a key first down. James Casey took the ball in, easy as pie, on first and goal.

So that’s it for non-conference – and a frustrating, disappointing skein of losses it’s been. But after four games, the Owls actually are in better shape than they were this time last year, because one of Rice’s first four losses in ‘06 was in the season and conference opener against Houston.

"We were here this time last year – we were 0-and-4," said Owl linebacker and defensive leader Brian Raines afterwards. "We know what we’ve got to do, and now we’ve just got to go out and do it. We have what it takes."

"Everything you've got to build for is Conference USA," Coach Bailiff said in his post-game comments. "Texas is absolutely the best, most athletic team we're going to play all year.

"These young men know that our conference opener with Southern Miss is 10 days away, and all these (non-conference) games are designed to do is make improvements for conference."

 --PTH               Box score, statistics....