Rice one win away from C-USA championship game
Owls crush Cougars 24-3

FROM RICE ATHLETICS 

After an 11-3 win earlier this week against East Carolina, Rice crushed rival University of Houston May 27, 24-3. Rice (37-20) can clinch a spot in the May 29 championship game with a victory over Marshall (27-30) May 28 at Cougar Field on the UH campus.

	RICE ATHLETICS
	Rice moves one step closer to a berth in the Conference USA Baseball Championship final with a 24-3 win over University of Houston.

The winner of the C-USA tournament will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The Owls set a C-USA single-game tournament record for runs scored and margin of victory. All nine starters recorded at least one hit, scored at least one run and produced at least one RBI. Fuda has his second multihomer game of the season as Rice upped its total to 85 home runs, the third most in program history. Rice slugged 120 homers in 1997 and 118 the following year before the NCAA altered the weight ratio of bats.

“You don’t see many games like that where you hit the ball that well,” Rice coach Wayne Graham said of a 20-hit barrage that included 11 for extra bases. “It was a great job of hitting by a lot of guys in the lineup.”
 
The definitive win was icing on the cake for Graham and his Owls this week. In his 30th year as a coach and his 19th season at Rice, Graham has been named the Keith LeClair C-USA Coach of the Year. It’s the fourth time in five years he has earned that honor. His winning percentage at Rice is the best in school history at .720.

For the second time in two seasons, Owls’ third baseman Anthony Rendon has been selected as the C-USA Player of the Year. Last week he was named one of 25 national semifinalists for the 2010 Dick Howser Trophy, given to the collegiate player of the year.

The local standout from nearby Lamar High School leads the conference in home runs (22) and runs scored (71). He is also among the league’s best in hitting (.378), RBI (72), slugging percentage (.786), walks (58) and on-base average (.519). Earlier in the season Rendon was invited to the tryout camp for the United States national team for a chance to represent his country later this summer in games against international competition all over the world.

Graham and Rendon headline a lengthy list of Rice baseball award winners announced by the league office this week. Jimmy Comerota, Mike Ojala, Diego Seastrunk, Rick Hague, Jeremy Rathjen and Taylor Wall were named to the C-USA second team; Michael Ratterree was named to the league’s all-freshmen squad.

All the award winners, including Graham and Rendon, were selected by a vote of the league’s head coaches, sports information directors and a media representative from each city.

The 20th-ranked Rice baseball team is the No. 1 seed of the 2010 C-USA Championship. The championship final will take place at 7 p.m. May 29 and will be televised live on CBS College Sports. All Rice games will be aired on the radio in the Houston area on KTRU (91.7 FM). Preliminary games will viewable on the web at RiceOwls.com.

Rice has now won or shared a total of 15-straight conference championships, including either regular season or conference tournament titles, dating back to 1996. The streak covers the Owls’ membership in three different leagues, beginning with the Southwest Conference, then nine seasons in the Western Athletic Conference (1997-2005) and five Conference USA titles in as many years.