AUSTIN - After losing a tough game to LSU with its secondary taking a beating in the process, Texas needs a rebound win before heading into the Big 12 schedule.
Hello, Rice.
If ever there was a program to be teed up for Texas (1-1), it's the small private school in Houston.
The Owls are among the No. 12 Longhorns' oldest rivals - 94 meetings since 1914 - but any real sense of competition between the programs vanished long ago. President John F. Kennedy joked about it in 1962 and nothing has changed since. Texas is 41-1 in the series since 1966 and the games are rarely close.
Even after all these years, second-year Rice coach Mike Bloomgren is willing to channel Kennedy's message from a speech about the challenge of the lunar space program..
"I think we all know it, but why does Rice play Texas? Why do we choose to go to the moon? Not because they are easy but because they are hard," Bloomgren said this week. "That's going to be the challenge that we accept and we embrace as a football team."
Rice (0-2) ranks near the bottom nationally on offense and is averaging just 14 points. On Saturday night, the Owls will face a Texas defense hungry to play after surrendering 471 yards passing and huge plays for touchdowns.
"Do we need to improve? Yeah. Are we bad? No we're not at all," said Texas sophomore Caden Sterns, who was alone in coverage on LSU's Justin Jefferson on the game-clinching 61-yard touchdown pass in the final three minutes. "We firmly know who we are and how well we can play."
Rice is familiar ground for Texas coach Tom Herman, who made a name for himself as the Owls' offensive coordinator in 2007-2008. That included a 10-3 finish in 2008 with a bowl win behind one of the top offenses in the country. But even that season included a 52-10 drubbing by Texas. Herman's stint at Rice also included introductions with then-Rice athletic director Chris Del Conte. Those two were joined together again in Austin in late 2017 when Del Conte was named athletic director at Texas.
Today's Big 12 Games
11 a.m. - Kansas State at Mississippi State, ESPN
11 a.m. - North Carolina State at West Virginia, FS1
2:30 p.m. - Oklahoma State at Tulsa, ESPN2
3 p.m. - Iowa at Iowa State, FS1
6:30 p.m. - TCU at Purdue, BTN
7 p.m. - Oklahoma at UCLA, FOX
7 p.m. - Texas at Rice, CBSSN
9:30 p.m. - Texas Tech at Arizona, ESPN