The Rice Owls are your 2003 National Champions of college baseball.
Damn, that sounds good. Let me say it again.
The Rice Owls are your 2003 National Champions of college baseball. That link has a photo gallery with it, by the way.
Any fans that want to leave a congratulatory message for the Owls can do so here or here, though the latter appears to be overloaded as I type this.
Congratulations, Rice! Woo hoo!
UPDATE: Full Chron coverage here: the front page story, the sports section story (actually an AP wire story), Fran Blinebury’s column, in which we will forgive him for dragging a Harry Potter reference into it, and the fan reaction story. ESPN’s Wayne Drehs has a feature on winning pitcher Phillip Humber and another on Chris Kolkhorst. Finally, here’s John Manual’s writeup.
UPDATE: There’s a victory celebration tonight at Reckling Park at 8 PM. I can’t be there, but if you’re in Houston, you should go. It’s free and should be a blast.
UPDATE: Here’s a fine NYT article on the champion Owls. And Wayne Graham has been named Coach of the Year by Collegiate Baseball. And here’s another good NYT article, this one about Coach Graham.
WHEEEE!
I confess I’m not much of a sports fan, but this news makes me quite happy. Go Rice!
go Rice!
Via Off the Kuff, the happy news that my alma mater has won the College World Series. This is Rice’s…
Congrats to you guys. Yall deserve it. Hook ’em!
Are you surprised? Of course Rice kicks butt… Stanford guys are all girly-men :).
It’s good to see a school known for its’ academics (other than Duke) win a NCAA title. It’s also good to see an “outsider” (as opposed to Texas, Stanford, LSU, and Arizona State) win the baseball title for once.
Congratulations Owls!
It is most appropriate that Rice wins its first NCAA national title in the most cerebral of major sports. I only watched the final two games on ESPN, but I was highly impressed with the analytical quality of the color commentary. The commentary provided much greater insight to the game within the game than I have ever gleaned from a Major League broadcast. I am no great baseball expert, however. I would like to know if Chuck agrees with this assessment.
I was worried when they didn’t get more out of the bases loaded situations early, but the 7 runs in the 6th had me breathing a whole lot easier.
I freely admit that I’m an LSU fan, but after they were eliminated, I wanted Rice to win. I watched all three games in the Championship series with my 80-year old father-in-law, a very proud Rice grad.
He had been in a bad car accident in March and hospitalized for over a month. Throughout his hospital stay he followed the Rice baseball team. Some really bad days in the hospital were lightened a bit when we discussed the Owls and how this might just be their year. Unsaid but understood was, “Don’t give up now. You’ve got to stick around for that.”
Since he has been home, the house rule of “no TV during dinner” has been waived for the Rice games. It has been a lot fun watching him enjoy this run by the Owls and such a blessing for him.
The commentary provided much greater insight to the game within the game than I have ever gleaned from a Major League broadcast. I am no great baseball expert, however. I would like to know if Chuck agrees with this assessment.
It was pretty good. I’m not a big fan of Harold Reynolds, but he and Mike Patrick did a perfectly fine job in the decisive game (my travels over the weekend prevented me from seeing the first two Finals games). They were very skeptical of Stanford coach Mark Marquess’ highly dubious decision to intentionally walk Craig Stansberry in the sixth inning. Reynolds was exactly right when he said “when a team offers you an out (by sacrifice bunting, which Stansberry was almost sure to do), you take it”.
The dugout reporters were fluff, but not to a point of distraction. The pitching analyst they had (don’t remember his name) said some useful things. The camera work was generally outstanding. Overall, I give them an A-.
I’m glad someone has baseball news to cheer about. Enjoy!
I guess this year’s CWS answers JFK’s question about why Rice plays Texas !!