Rice Women's Basketball 2007-08 Schedule (PDF)
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Sept. 12, 2007

HOUSTON - Rice University women's basketball coach Greg Williams announced the 2007-08 schedule Wednesday afternoon that features seven games against teams that played in last season's postseason, including four NCAA Tournament squads.

With Autry Court renovations in full-swing and due to be completed in time for the 2008-09 campaign, Rice will play its "home" games at Sharp Gym on the Houston Baptist University campus.

"This season presents a very unique challenge to our program in a lot of different ways," Williams said. "The non-conference schedule is very unique in regards to having only three `home' games when we would normally have six, seven or eight home contests. It's a difficult situation anytime you go on the road and play someone on their home court."

After an exhibition contest against HBU (Nov. 1), the Owls spend four consecutive weekends on the road with trips to the Winthrop Classic (Nov. 9-11) along with games at Cal State Northridge (Nov. 16) and UCLA (Nov. 18).

Rice welcomes Arkansas-Little Rock (Nov. 20) to Sharp Gym for its home opener before returning to the road for the Coors Classic (Nov. 23-24) on the Colorado campus. The Owls open the tournament against former coach Cristy McKinney's Clemson squad.

"The Clemson game is very interesting especially for our players that were recruited by Coach McKinney," Williams said. "Coach McKinney started that tradition of scheduling tough out of conference games and it's something that I wanted to continue. We have been fortunate to go to the WNIT the last two seasons and a big factor to our program getting a bid was having a challenging non-conference schedule."

Rice concludes the non-conference slate with trips to Furman (Nov. 30), Wake Forest (Dec. 2), Prairie View A&M (Dec. 28) and Baylor (Dec. 30). Sandwiched in-between those four road games are home tilts with former Southwest Conference and WAC rival TCU (Dec. 6) and Rider (Dec. 20) before Rice heads into its third season of Conference USA play.

"We're a team in transition with five freshmen and a couple of players coming off of injuries," Williams said. "Hopefully, when conference play rolls around, the freshmen aren't playing like freshmen anymore and our injured players will be healthy to go through the rigors of a very competitive Conference USA schedule."

Five of the Owls first six C-USA games are played in the city of Houston, including the league-opener against defending regular season champion Tulane (Jan. 4). Rice also faces off against Bayou City rival Houston (Jan. 13) at Hofheinz Pavilion before seeing the Cougars (Jan. 26) for a second time 13 days later at Sharp Gym.

"In my opinion, there isn't any clear cut favorite in Conference USA heading into the season," Williams said. "There could be numerous teams that could win the conference, including our squad. That should make for an exciting conference season."

After games at UAB (Feb. 1) and Memphis (Feb. 3) along with home games with SMU (Feb. 7) and Tulsa (Feb. 9), Rice spends back-to-back weekends on the road before closing out the regular season against Marshall (Feb. 28) and reigning tournament champion East Carolina (March 1).

"This is the third straight season that we've drawn four consecutive road games at some point during the conference schedule," Williams said. "It something that just doesn't happen to us, but any team should never have to play four straight conference road games. I wish our games were spaced out more between home and road. The good news is that we have a home weekend before going to conference tournament"

The 2008 Conference USA Championship will be held in Orlando at the new UCF Convocation Center from March 6-9.

"All of the players in the conference will be excited to go to Orlando, while the coaches will be challenged to keep their teams focused," Williams said. "The last two seasons we've had only our conference tournament champion make the NCAA Tournament. If that's any indication, there will be 12 teams playing for their season over a four-day span."