Good morning from the Rice campus, where the live oaks are shady, the lab coffee is strong and I'm wearing my stats-cop badge on my lanyard. Odalys Chen-Moreau, bioengineering Ph.D., reporting for duty. I model football like a clinical trial. I want a hypothesis, a control group and a sample size large enough to mean something. And whenever someone on the internet declares a team "finished" after one bad quarter, I say the same thing: N equals too small.
This week's protocol has two phases. Phase one: the results from our 38-17 loss to Tulsa, reported honestly, because suppressing negative data is a crime against science. Phase two: an Owls-on-Owls road trial in Boca Raton, where the defense has a very interesting weakness.
Part 1: Trial Results, Tulsa 38, Rice 17
Let me start with the positive findings, because they were spectacular. Jacurri Brown ran 50 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter on Oct. 17. Tommy Bauchiero added a 32-yard field goal. Then, after Tulsa scored, Brown went 78 yards for another touchdown. Rice led 17-7 early in the second quarter. Brown finished with 154 rushing yards on 11 carries, tying a career high. That's 14 yards a carry. In my field, a result that large gets you the front page of a journal.
Rice ran for 289 yards on 54 carries. Defensive data, also encouraging: Austin Harnetiaux and Stone Combs each made 10 tackles, and Harnetiaux added a sack.
Now the negative findings, which I will not bury in a supplementary appendix. Tulsa scored 21 points in the second quarter, two of the touchdowns on short throws from Baylor Hayes, and led 21-17 at halftime. Rice was shut out for the final 40 minutes and 59 seconds. Brown completed two of six passes for 47 yards. Tulsa out-gained us 401-351, and Hayes went 20 of 27 for 249 yards and three touchdowns without a turnover.
So, the conclusion. The run game works. The passing game is, statistically speaking, a pilot study. We are 1-6 and 0-3 in the American. That record includes a 52-0 loss at Notre Dame, which is a perfectly valid data point that I acknowledge exists. It also includes a 16-14 loss to UTSA and a 28-21 loss to Western Michigan. Two of our losses were by one score, and N is still too small to write the obituary. Seven games is a pilot study, not a peer-reviewed conclusion, and I will not let anyone publish early.
Part 2: The Road Trial, Rice at Florida Atlantic
Saturday at noon Eastern on ESPNU, Rice (1-6) visits Florida Atlantic (4-2, 1-1) at Flagler Credit Union Stadium in Boca Raton. Owls vs. Owls. I've prepared a control group: it's also Owls.
The Hypothesis
Here is my hypothesis, and it's a strong one. Rice runs for 238.9 yards per game, seventh in FBS. Florida Atlantic allows 218.2 rushing yards per game, 134th in FBS. FAU also allows 416.5 yards per game overall, 120th, and 31.5 points per game, 118th. Last week, Army ran for 479 yards against it. I'm not saying we'll do that. Army has a much larger sample of running plays than anyone. But the trend is not subtle.
Brown leads Rice with 668 rushing yards and six touchdowns on 118 carries, and he has 478 passing yards with three touchdowns. Tyvonn Byars and D'Andre Hardeman Jr. give the run game depth.
The Confounding Variables
A good scientist lists her confounders. The FAU passing game is real. FAU throws for 307.3 yards per game, ninth in FBS, and converts 53.1 percent of third downs, also ninth. Caden Veltkamp has 1,743 passing yards, 15 touchdowns and only three interceptions. Kelby Valsin has 47 catches for 601 yards. Our pass defense is respectable, 188.7 yards allowed per game, 36th, but our third-down defense allows 42.6 percent, 108th.
And our turnover margin is minus-6, 126th. That's a variable I'd like to control.
The Control I Like
Here's the part nobody talks about. FAU holds the ball 27:28 per game, 125th in FBS. Rice holds it 29:51. If we run the ball like the data says we can, Veltkamp spends long stretches of a hot Boca noon sitting on a bench. You cannot complete 72 percent of your passes from a bench. I checked the literature.
FAU's red zone offense also ranks 91st, scoring on 82.6 percent of trips, while our red zone defense ranks 29th. When the field gets small, our defense gets smart.
Prior Studies
CollegeFootballData.com lists this series at 3-3, a perfectly balanced trial. FAU won 17-14 in 2022, Rice won 24-21 at home in 2023, and FAU won 27-21 in Houston last season. Six games, three each. A coin would be proud.
A Note on Small Samples
FAU fans will tell you their team is "back" after beating Texas Southern 66-10. Respectfully, N equals too small. That same FAU team lost 66-21 at Florida in the opener and 56-24 at Army last week. Sixty-six and 56. That's not a defense, that's a placebo.
Field Notes: Houston vs. Boca Raton
Houston. Our home is the fourth-most populous city in America, 2.3 million at the 2020 census, nicknamed the Bayou City and Space City. It's home to the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions, which is where people like me get our coffee. NASA's Johnson Space Center, home of Mission Control, is here. And on Sept. 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood in Rice Stadium, now First Community Stadium, built in 1950, and gave the "We choose to go to the Moon" speech. Our football stadium launched the most famous sentence of the space race. Name another stadium that can say that. I'll wait, and I'll time it.
We also have the Marching Owl Band, the MOB. Members do not march. They wear pinstriped suits and fedoras and play violins, a cello and occasionally a harp. It is the most well-designed experiment in college football.
Boca Raton. Boca is a beach city of 97,422 people at the 2020 census. In 1925, architect Addison Mizner announced it would be "the foremost resort city on the North American continent." Mizner also planned a main street called El Camino Real that would be 20 lanes wide. Twenty lanes. In a beach town. As a bioengineer, I have studied blood vessels with smarter traffic planning.
The name is a delight, too. Wikipedia says "boca" meant a mouth, as in an inlet on a sailor's map. And the meaning of "ratones," it says, "is less certain." A city that isn't sure what half its own name means. Please, Boca, run the study.
And Boca, Wikipedia notes, is "still centered around luxury beach culture" and "dotted by many malls." We have Mission Control. They have a mall. Both are excellent places to go when you need to buy something, but only one of them landed on the Moon.
Conclusion and Discussion
The data say Rice should run the ball, run it again and then run it once more for statistical significance. Control the clock, keep Veltkamp on the bench, finish drives, and don't hand the other Owls the ball. If the hypothesis holds, this is a much closer trial than the record suggests. If it doesn't, I'll report it honestly next Monday, with error bars.
Go Owls. The real ones.
My call: Florida Atlantic Owls 33, Rice Owls 24.