2016 NWSL College Draft

On January 15, I hosted the video stream of the NWSL College Draft, the first time the league's draft has been video streamed.

Spectacular. #nwsldraft pic.twitter.com/SPca6lGHvT

— Michelle (@xphile101) January 15, 2016

While it took a whole four hours and certainly stretched our abilities of pontification and endurance, it was a blast. I worked really hard in the build-up to research the player pool, which was pretty difficult considering there was not much consensus after the top 20.

The actual event turned out really well, I thought. I enjoyed getting to meet and interview the players in attendance, I wound up having researched 39 of the 40 players actually selected, and despite the stress, I just had fun.

You've really got to give it up to @jtyardley - two draft calls in less than 24 hours. That is after hours and hours of research. Well done

— Marc Connolly (@mconnolly10) January 15, 2016

It was also great to work with a fellow Rice alum, Jen Cooper of Keeper Notes fame, whom I have known since I was an undergraduate sports editor and she was the school advisor to the student newspaper; we talked soccer even then!







Here's the draft, in all its glory:

Tables turned, I become the interviewee

It doesn't happen often, but a fellow media professional turned the tables and made me the interviewee this week, as I had the good fortune of being a guest on the Mixxed Zone podcast with my long-time colleague, Jen Cooper. We didn't do TOO much Rice reminiscing (at least not that we recorded), but it's good fun.

Jen (aka The Keeper) is one of the people who knows the most about women's soccer, and it's always a pleasure to be part of and discuss that world. Take a listen:
You can also download the episode directly via this link.

Ten years later: The Streak

DataOmaha.com
It wasn't part of the streak, but Rice went on
to win the 2003 national title.

April 8 marks the 10-year anniversary of the most impressive sports streak I have ever personally witnessed, Rice University’s 30-game baseball winning streak in 2003. Ten years ago tonight, Rice beat Texas A&M 8-0 at Reckling Park in Houston to record the Owls’ 30th consecutive win and run the team’s record to 33-1 on the season. They stood just four wins away from tying the Division I record of 34 consecutive wins, set by Texas in 1977, and 10 games shy of the NCAA record of 40 consecutive wins, set by Division III Marietta College (Ohio) in 1999.

Rice's streak came to an abrupt end the next night, with Lamar beating Rice 7-5. Somewhat appropriately, Rice will play Lamar head-to-head on Tuesday night, this time in Beaumont, 10 years to the day after the Cardinals ended Rice’s run. That Lamar win actually sent Rice into a tailspin that saw the Owls go 4-6 in their next 10 games and finish the regular season 15-9.

But the story has a happy ending for Rice alumni like me, as Rice went 10-2 in the NCAA tournament and won its first – and only – national championship, finishing a remarkable 58-12. As a Rice sophomore and radio broadcaster for the baseball team at the time, that entire season provided a series of special memories impossible to forget.

With my scorebooks packed away in storage, looking back at a simple list of results to remember the 30-game win streak is a bit odd. I actually don’t remember that many of the individual games, which is rare for me. Here, however, are a few I definitely recall:

Feb. 23 – Game No. 5 – A dreary Sunday afternoon at the end of a home tournament, Rice and UT-Arlington made it all the way to the 10th inning without scoring before a bloop single from Austin Davis gave Rice the win. Coming on the heels of a 6-0 win over SEC power Ole Miss, it felt like a prime example of a trap game, but Rice somehow found a way to win.

March 11 – Game No. 13 – The big one. Rice 2, Texas 1, a scoreline that never gets old. Enrique Cruz hit a dramatic late-game home run – to the opposite field – while Wade Townsend hit 97 on the radar gun with a strikeout of Omar Quintanilla and David Aardsma helped keep UT at 1 run in the late going. For a Rice person, it doesn’t get much better than that.

March 21 – Game No. 19 – Rice 20, Liberty 1 – It’s a mismatch and a blowout, of course, but I remember it because fourth-string walk-on catcher Jon Gillespie, a favorite of everybody involved with the program, got in the game and pulled a single through the right side. Jon wound up finishing with the highest batting average of any Rice player in 2003: a perfect 1.000.

April 8 – Game No. 30 – Rice 8, Texas A&M 0 – With Rice playing in the WAC at the time, facing Big 12 opposition on Tuesdays was a big deal, and Rice downed Texas, Nebraska, Baylor, and A&M during the streak, including this comprehensive demolition to reach No. 30.

I’ll leave you with the opening from an old newspaper article that includes one of my favorite ledes I've ever written, appearing the week before the streak came to an end:

Crash Davis, the wise catcher in the movie Bull Durham, once said “a player has to respect the streak.”

Rice baseball players respect their school-record 26-game winning streak, but they aren’t afraid to talk about it.

“It’s a blast,” sophomore first baseman Vincent Sinisi said. “We came back this year with a lot of confidence, and that’s all it is – a bunch of confidence. Everybody comes out every night expecting to win the ballgame.”

The Owls have won almost every ballgame for the past month and a half, running their record to 29-1 and claiming the consensus top ranking in the country.

Philip Humber's perfect game!

Humber (center) with catcher Travis Reagan and assistant coach David Pierce in Nevada in 2004.

Whenever Rice guys succeed in professional baseball, I get tremendously proud. Not because I had anything to do with their success (I didn't). Not because I competed alongside them (I was the radio broadcaster). Not because we were best friends or anything like that (we haven't stayed in touch past occasional alumni games).

I get proud because I saw these guys mature from frightened freshmen to grizzled veterans, playing in front of everything ranging from sparsely-filled bleachers in California to hostile grandstands in Hawaii. Because we shared the plane flights and the bus trips, the successes and failures. Seeing them perform on the next level is just an awesome feeling. It feels the best for the guys I came in with and the class that followed, and Philip Humber is a perfect example.

I actually got excited for Philip earlier in the week, watching him pitch against the Orioles. I only saw one inning in real time, and he was laboring, but he got into the sixth with only one run allowed, and it immediately inspired me to do some research on the slider he has added since I last saw him pitch. I watched a few innings the next day, and it took me back to three years of watching him pitch on Friday nights in college. I'll never forget when he broke the Rice single-season strikeout record against Hawaii, only to have the family of an old alumnus remind officials of a higher strikeout total from the 1920s or so.

But to hear that Philip was working on a perfect game … was just incredible. I saw him pitch when he struggled with his control and his composure. I saw him become a weekend starter as a freshman. Saw him be an unsteady pitcher on the sport’s biggest stage at the College World Series, knowing he could show the world much better than that. And I saw him prove himself to everybody in the deciding game of the 2003 College World Series with a complete game to give us the championship.

Well, everybody is going to remember his name now. I just saw a guy I know throw a perfect game in the major leagues. That’s unbelievable.

I always felt Philip was underserved as the least noticed of Rice’s three first-round draft picks. Jeff Niemann is 6-foot-9 and had the amazing 2003 season, and Wade Townsend was the outspoken, emotional guy who everybody fawned over, but Philip was the steady one. A weekend starter almost from the day he set foot on campus, it didn’t come quite as easily as everybody thought.

Always quiet but without the loud confidence of the other two, Philip was great in conference play, but the postseason was another story. Rice always seemed to lose when he pitched in the postseason, mostly due to the bullpen and a lack of run support, but occasionally due to home runs. In fact, he was the winning pitcher in only one postseason game out of I think eight appearances while he was at Rice, but that one was the 2003 championship decider.

There were so many questions about him heading into that game, because he lasted only a few innings in his last start against Texas and had taken the loss against Houston in the super regionals, but we knew Philip was plenty capable. I have a memory, which may not be entirely accurate, of senior pitcher Steven Herce predicting Humber would pitch well against Stanford because his split-fingered fastball was tailor-made for that left-handed lineup. It was, and he did, and we won the national championship, and I was so happy he was on the mound for the final out.

But even that couldn’t put him on top forever. In the 2004 regional, he took the loss in what is still one of the biggest upsets in NCAA history, a Game 1 loss to a sub-.500 Texas Southern team. When called on as a reliever two days later, he took the loss in the last game of his collegiate career, giving up a grand slam against Texas A&M. But he was picked highest of the trio for a reason, and after several teams and arm surgery (which was much, much, much more difficult than I just made it sound, but I wasn't as directly involved), he has found a home in Chicago, adding a slider to become a regular starter.

Today he entered the record books, and having broadcasted, followed, and rooted for Philip Humber for the last 10 years, being able to see the final few outs of him throwing a perfect game defies description. Congratulations, Philip -- everybody from Rice is really proud of you.