Scouting The Owls From A Rice Fan

[owl40]

Some scouting from the Rice side for the UNT fans....

Things Rice does well

- Clement (QB), Dillard (WR), and Casey aka “Thor” (TE, RB, and QB in short yardage) are All-American caliber (Chase on Davey O’Brien watch list, Dillard on most All-American teams, and Casey was first team Freshman All-American last year. Dillard had ~150 yards in receiving against Texas last week and he and Chase will break all-time NCAA TD record either this week or next week for a QB/Receiver tandem. They are special to watch and class guys as well. Dillard and his 42 inch vertical will be playing on Sundays next year.

- Clement can run and pass. Handles offense well. Went to same High School as UNT QB.

- Team believes it should win (attitude and chemistry much better than last year as it was Owls third coach in three years)

- Disciplined, not a lot of penalties

- Puts pressure on D with no-huddle offense; Offense controls game tempo

- New Coach (Bailiff) recruiting much better talent. Stealing kids from BCS schools rather than other C-USA, Sunbelt, WAC, etc. schools.

Things Rice does not do well

- Run the ball consistently (other than Clement)

- Pass protect/Run block consistently

- Defense has marginally improved from last year but is currently ranked #111 in D-1 compared to UNT at #116. Would not be surprised to see 100 points and 1000 yards combined.

- A few key injuries with best CB (King), best Defensive player (Raines), some D-lineman, and other starting LB (James) are all out; Depth was a strength at beginning of year but Memphis game really hurt (no pun intended).

- Soft in the middle; Tackling has been poor; lots of missed ones

- Special Teams punt and kickoff coverage is always an adventure

- Kicker has short range and Punter is very inconsistent

Key for UNT will be to not let Clement have time to throw and force Rice to run the ball. Don’t let Casey, Dillard, and Clement beat you. Make the supporting cast beat you. On defense, Rice is thin and inexperienced at LB and Texas exploited the Rice secondary which was cheating up to support the run and missed tackles at line-of-scrimmage. Take advantage of Special Teams opportunities. Having watched the Owls for many years, this is the best team they have had in the last ~14 years since they were co-champs in the last year of the old SWC. They are better than the team that finally went to Bowl game in 2006. Unfortunate how they played the last two quarters against Vandy and last 3 quarters against UT. They are better than they showed in those two games but ultimately the national stage will judge them more on those BCS games rather than the remainder of the schedule. Some of us Old Timers remember that Rice has never beaten UNT in football and do remember the disaster in 88. Hope UNT fans show-up. Will likely be a sparse crowd.

[filmerj]

Rice has never beaten UNT in football and do remember the disaster in 88. Hope UNT fans show-up. Will likely be a sparse crowd.

Welcome to the board, thanks for the report. I think our fan base may surprise some people, I hope they surprise me. I know of a few people from DFW headed down there myself included. Loooking to tailgait at the AD tent. See you guys in H-town.

Edited September 26, 2008 by filmerj

[Eagle1855]

Thanks for the break down. Almost sounded like you were talking about UNT...

[foutsrouts]

Nice rundown, and it does seem that the two teams have quite a few similarities. I would disagree with the characterization of your '88 loss to us as a disaster. 1AA or not, I was there and we were the better team. If Texas and TT would speak honestly about our team that year they would undoubtedly concur.

[greenminer]

You will not touch our QB. Our protection is a brick wall. Flesheating abounds from tackle to tackle. Run blocking will rumble and pave the way for 4+ ypc. And yet, we might not score 30. We're that awesome.

[NT80]

Nice rundown, and it does seem that the two teams have quite a few similarities. I would disagree with the characterization of your '88 loss to us as a disaster. 1AA or not, I was there and we were the better team. If Texas and TT would speak honestly about our team that year they would undoubtedly concur.

I thought the '88 game at Rice was a great day. The weather did get nasty in the second half. Scott Davis and the team played like they owned the SWC that season, we could have been SWC co-champs as a 1-AA.