Soccer Team Wraps-Up Homestand With SMU On Friday At 7 PM; Tulsa On Sunday At 1 PM Owls Have To Get Ready For Two Key C-USA Games Against Longtime Ruvals

THIS WEEK: The Rice soccer team, 5-4-0 on the season and tied for second place in the Conference USA standings with three points from its 1-1-0 league record, closes out a lengthy six-game homestand this weekend (Oct. 3- 5). The Owls host C-USA foe and longtime rival SMU (3-6-1, 1-1-0) on Friday at 7 pm at the Rice Soccer Stadium. The Blue & Gray then hosts another traditional rival, Tulsa (6-4-1, 1-1-0) at 1 pm on Sunday (Oct. 5).

LIVE IN-GAME STATS: Live in-game statistics for all Rice matches are posted on the web. At the start of the game, go to the respective live stats link at the top of this page and follow the text description of the action.

QUICK ON THE OWLS: There are 17 experienced players on the roster, including six returning starters from last season's team that finished 12-7-2 and reached the semifinals of the Conference USA Tournament. The Owls' incoming class of freshmen was rated among the best in C-USA... In a preseason poll of the league's 12 head coaches, Rice was picked fourth overall while sophomore midfielder Kate Edwards was named to the coaches' 2008 C-USA Preseason Team... Rice has the honor of hosting the annual C-USA Tournament at the end of the regular season (Nov. 5-9)... Rice has four losses, but a closer look at that number is in order. Two of the losses were to teams ranked among the Top 15 in the nation (Texas A&M and Oklahoma State) and a third was to a regionally-ranked TCU team on the road.

HUSTON CLOSES IN ON CENTURY MARK: Chris Huston needs only one more victory to reach 100 wins in her coaching career. Huston's career coaching record includes her seven and a half years at Rice and two full Division I seasons across town at the University of Houston.

REGIONAL RESPECT: Rice is getting votes in one regional poll this week. The Owls are receiving votes in the latest Central Regional ranking by the Internet site SoccerBuzz.com. Here's a quick link to theSoccerBuzz.com rankings page.

HOME SWEET HOME: Playing at home is good news for the Owls. In 69 games played on campus at the Track/Soccer Stadium, Rice owns an all-time record of 46-18-5 (.703). The Blue & Gray went 8-1-1 at home last season and the fans responded. The team was among the C-USA leaders in home attendance by averaging 390 fans per game. After not playing at home for a span of almost four weeks earlier this season, the Owls are now wrapping-up a lengthy six-game homestand on Sunday (Oct. 5).

DID YOU KNOW? The current six game homestand is the longest in school history. The Owls originally had a road game scheduled at Lamar on Sept. 23 (which would have split the homestand in two halves), but that event was cancelled due to the effects of Hurricane Ike. Without the Lamar game, Rice home matches stretch from Sept. 19 to Oct. 5.

WONG NAMED C-USA CO-OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Rice junior Shelley Wong has been named the Conference USA co-offensive player of the week for soccer the league office announced from its headquarters in Irving, Tex., on Monday (Sept. 29)... Wong shares the conference offensive honor with SMU midfielder Lauren Shepherd. East Carolina goalkeeper Amber Campbell was named the conference defender of the week... The Owls' veteran midfielder earned the honor after scoring a pair of goals, including the game-winner against Marshall, to help Rice go 1-1-0 last week. The native of Virginia Beach, Va., shared the team lead with seven shots and averaged 84.5 minutes of playing time for the Owls' two games. She maintained a .286 shooting percentage and her shots-on-goal percentage was .571. The Marshall win marked the second time this season for Wong to notch a two-goal game. She is only the sixth Owl in school history to have two or more two-goal games in the same season, and she's the first Rice player to accomplish that feat since 2006... The C-USA award mark the first time for Wong to earn the league's offensive/defensive player of the week honor. It's the third time this season for a Rice Owl to earn the weekly accolades from the conference office. Rice's Anne Candee and Meghan Erkel were named the league's offensive and defensive players of the week for Aug. 25 and Sept. 22, respectively.

STREAKING STARTERS: The sophomore tandem of Kate Edwards and goalkeeper Meghan Erkel have been in the starting lineup for every game of their collegiate careers. The duo have identical streaks of 30-straight starts for Rice, the longest on the team. With regards to this particular streak, note that neither Edwards nor Erkel are at Baker College!

CROWDED SIDELINE: The Owls have been fighting through more than their share of injuries this season, particularly on defense where the backline alone has lost a total of four different starters. In 2008 injuries have forced Rice to rotate a total of 10 different players for starts on the backline. The Owls have had to use seven different defensive lineups for its nine games as well as a completely different backline configuration in each of the last five games... Junior defender Katelyn Ostendorf, an All-Conference USA honoree on the field and in the classroom, has been sidelined with an injury she suffered in the off-season. Sophomore defender & forward Korey Taylor has been unable to practice. Senior defender Chandra Ewing was sidelined five games into the season. Junior Anne Candee had to be assisted from the field in the McNeese State game (Sept. 19) and it was the same for Ashley Lucas two days later vs. Texas A&M (Sept. 21).

RUSSELL MAKES DEBUT: The good news is the Owls were able to get one player back from the injured list over the weekend. Freshman Chealsey Russell missed the first seven games with a concussion but made her collegiate debut against C-USA foe East Carolina on Sept. 26. The defender from Missouri made her first start against Marshall two days later where she played all 90 minutes.

SHOW-ME-STATERS: In her first career start vs. Marshall last Sunday, Chealsey Russell registered an assist on a goal by Amy Beger, who is also a fellow freshman and Missouri native. Russell is from Springfield, Mo., while Beger is from St. Louis. Prior to Rice the Show-Me-State duo were longtime teammates for the prestigious St. Louis Soccer Club. After the Marshall victory, Russell said the assist on Beger's goal was almost second-nature. "We've already done that play like a million times," Russell said. "I knew how and where she wanted to go to get open and take the shot."

SMASHING ROOKIE CLASS: The Owls have relied heavily on their freshman class, and the rookies have delivered. Four of the current freshmen have combined for 18 starts... The Owls' rookie tandem of Amy Beger and Hope Ward both started and did well in an extremely intense environment against 17th-ranked Oklahoma State (Sept. 5) before a rowdy crowd of almost 1,400 OSU fans. In Ward's Division I debut against UTSA, the rookie from nearby Kingwood notched two assists in the team's five-goal performance... In the 4-2 win over McNeese State, Beger scored two goals and assisted on another. Not only was the break-through performance the first goals and assists of her career, her five-point day is tied for the sixth-highest single game point total in school history. It stands alone as the most points in a game by a Rice true freshman. Former Owl Caitlin Robbins accomplished the same feat as a redshirt freshman in 2005... Freshman forward Annie Kadota was the star of the season-opener, notching the game-winning goal and an assist in her debut at the Division I level. Kadota, one of the Owls' talented newcomers, opened the scoring with a goal and then assisted on another just a over a minute later. The Rice rookie from Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., became only the fifth Owl in school history to score a goal in her first career game and she did it just 31 minutes into her collegiate career.

GREAT SCOTT: Junior Erin Scott notched two assists in Sunday's win over Marshall to give her a total of 12 for her career and move her into a tie for third place on Rice's all-time assists list. The Richardson, Tex., native now needs three more assists to tie for second at Rice. Other career offensive milestones fast-approaching on Scott's radar are for shots (needs 15 more to tie for second) and points (needs five more to tie for fourth).

THE OPPOSITION: SMU is 3-6-1 on the season and 1-1-0 in C-USA action. The Mustangs came up big in a match televised by CBS College Sports last Sunday. Goalkeeper Courtney Webb picked up a shutout in her second career start as the ponies knocked off UTEP, 1-0... Tulsa is 6-4-1 overall and 1-1-0 in conference. The Golden Hurricane has the most explosive offense in C-USA, averaging three goals and more than 16 shots per game. Tulsa plays across town at the University of Houston on Friday night... Tulsa, SMU and Rice head into the weekend games tied for second in the conference.

THE SMU SERIES: Rice, SMU and Tulsa all have a long series history for soccer that pre-dates the teams' arrival in Conference USA in July of 2005. The schools played some memorable soccer games as members of the Western Athletic Conference for four years before that... Rice has faced SMU a total of nine times since 2001, the second-highest total against one opponent. Friday's meeting is the tenth in the series and that will tie (with UTEP) for the most times for Rice to face an opposing team. The Blue & Gray is 1-8 against SMU and the Owls have never beaten the Mustangs in the city of Houston (0-3). The Ponies thumped Rice by a score of 5-1 in the most-recent meeting in Houston (2006). Its stands as the Owls' worst loss in the series history. Rice's lone win in the SMU series was a 2-1 victory in 2005, a double-overtime thriller in Dallas.

THE TULSA SERIES: Rice leads the all-time series with Tulsa 4-3 overall, and 2-1 when playing in the city of Houston. The Owls secured identical 1-0 victories over the Golden Hurricane in each of the past two seasons, including the 2007 match in Oklahoma. Each of the last five meetings with Tulsa have ended in narrow 1-0 margins. Win or lose, the difference of every Rice-Tulsa game since 2001 has been by just one goal... Since SMU and Tulsa became C-USA travel partners in 2005, Rice has never swept nor been swept in the SMU-Tulsa weekend.

ELSEWHERE AROUND C-USA: As expected, the competitive balance in Conference USA has made for an incredibly tight league race. Ten of the 12 teams are tied with matching 1-1-0 records. The C-USA composite schedule for the games this week is as follows:
Friday (Oct. 3)
East Carolina at Southern Miss, 4 pm
UAB at Colorado College, 5 pm
Marshall at UCF, 6 pm
Tulsa at Houston, 7 pm
SMU at Rice, 7 pm
Memphis at UTEP, 8 pm

Sunday (Oct. 5)
East Carolina at UCF, Noon
Memphis at Colorado College, 1 pm
SMU at Houston, 1 pm
Marshall at Southern Miss, 1 pm
Tulsa at Rice, 1 pm
UAB at UTEP, 1 pm

JUST FOR KICKS: This year fans will have a chance to get some extra insight to the Rice soccer team via the Internet. The players will be featured one-by-one in a question & answer segment titled "Just For Kicks." Fans can check out the feature at the following link: Just For Kicks

WAIBEL LENDS A HELPING FOOT: Over the summer Rice volunteer soccer coach and Houston Dynamo star Craig Waibel made a total of 10 football field goals to help send 30 youths from local hospitals to the Dynamo's SuperLiga semifinal match against Pachuca... Waibel and Houston Texans kicker Chris Brown arranged to have three kids from local hospitals receive free tickets to the Dynamo game for every field goal Waibel could make after the Texans' practice on July 27. With Brown as his holder and coach, Waibel put on a place kicking display. The Owls' volunteer soccer coach made 10-of-14 attempts, including one eye-opening kick from 63 yards. For his effort, 30 local kids got to see the Dynamo in action... Waibel, who helped lead the Dynamo to back-to-back MLS Cup championships each of the last two seasons, has been a volunteer soccer coach at Rice since 2006.

LET'S PLAY THE FAMILY FEUD: The Sept. 5-7 weekend was a big one for junior defender Alexa Coralli. On Sept. 5 the Dallas native returned to the field for the first time in two years after undergoing a a redshirt season in 2007. Coralli made her first start two days later against Oklahoma where she defended against her younger sister, Sage Coralli, a starting forward for the Sooners... Alexa Coralli has since made six-straight starts on defense for the Owls.

NEXT IN: C-USA action continues next week but the Owls won't be at home. Rice meets foes UAB and Memphis on Oct. 10 & Oct. 12, respectively. The UAB game is at 7 pm in Birmingham. The Owls are ar Memphis in a 12 noon road match that is slated for a television broadcast by CBS College Sports.