I got up early Wednesday morning and drove to Hattiesburg for the C-USA conference tournament. I have never been this far into the southeast. It is a bit greener here. But it is not that much different. The area is inundating, gently sloping, but not flat really.

I made it just in time for Rice's 12:30 start. The game officially got under way at 12:35.

Taylor Wall as starter did well. But it looked like it was as much the Marshall kids mailed it in. Wall got the ball up a few times when the Marshall batters popped up or flied out. Wall walked four or five and was behind on quite a few hitters. But he also made some very good pitches.

The bats, on the other hand were hot. The Marshall starter Straily is actually a pretty good pitcher. But he gave up three runs in the first and four in the third capped off with a three run Rendon home run. Then a procession of relievers came in, most of whom got roughed up. The score ended 13 - 0 and was called early for the 10 run mercy rule. The game was ended after seven innings so Taylor Wall got a complete game shutout.

Rice got back from their finals break to play a disappointing Texas A&M - Corpus Christi team Wednesday night. This year TAM-CC came in 17-29. Their pitching staff has an ERA over 7. Rice won. The final score was 14-2.

Rice started Jared Rogers. He seems to be our midweek starter of choice. He has great stuff but often not so much control. Tonight the plate umpire seemed to be calling a very wide zone both inside and out. This certainly helped Jared. The umpire called it consistently for all three strikes meaning there were several called strikeouts.

Rogers went four innings. Then Mark Haynes went two innings. Then we got a pleasant surprise. Ryan Berry started the seventh inning. His velocity was good. He had a little trouble with control but mainly he had trouble getting his infielders to make plays. It looked like balls coming off the bats were knuckling. Anyone he got four outs and finally retired the side. Then Diego Seastrunk pitched the eighth and the first batter in the ninth. After get a lot of full counts in the eighth he struck out the first man in the ninth in dominating fashion. WG seemed to have seen enough so he came out and replaced him with Matt Evers. Evers got the last two outs. It was good to see a few pitchers get to air it out and get some of the rust out.

Rogers gave up two solo home runs, one to the opposing starting pitcher. Rice was down 2-0 before the onslaught. After the starter, who someone said was their closer, they pitched two seldom used relievers with ERA's well over 10. Natch, we struggled against them. But after getting one run in the third I think and then breaking through for three in the fourth off the starter Rice got rolling. Rice got three more in the sixth. In the eighth, with Rice up 7-2 the AM-CC manager brought in a starter to mop up. Natch, this is the guy we beat around. We scored seven in the eighth to break it open to 14-2. The starter got tagged for all of them.

Anyway there might have been a few jitters after getting down 0-2. We certainly wondered what a loss to these guys would do for our RPI. But the kids battled hard.
The three run fourth was done on an interesting play. The bases were loaded, full count and two outs. So the runners took off with the pitch. The alert start by the runner on first allowed three runs to easily score on a single. That was an unusual play to say the least.

The pitcher who hit the home run tagged it very well to left field. It was well over the berm out there. That was his twelfth home run of the year.

Diego Seatrunk can bring it hard and his ball has amazing movement. I suspect he will be projected as a reliever. He needs to work on command but he has a major league arm.

Rice versus Texas tonight. 6:30 PM

The excitement builds. It will be a big crowd tonight. The weather will be about perfect I think.

As a promotion for St. Pat's the first 1,000 coming in get a green Rice baseball cap. In addition the players will wear the same green hats and these game worn hats will be later auctioned on the Rice website.

I'm sure there will be green beer sold in the tent down the left field line.

We mostly exhausted our pitching this weekend. Graham states he will not wear out the front line pitchers for this weekend's conference series opener. We also have a game Wednesday night versus the UH Cougars at the Cougar Field.

So we are going to likely give some lesser used pitchers a chance to show what they can do. We may see Reckling, Benak, and others get to pitch a few innings. If not tonight, then tomorrow night. Some of the weekend starters may get innings too.