Inside Baseball

Wild Rice  

The Owls beat Stanford to win their first national title in any sport

By Daniel G. Habib

Two and barbecue, or so went the dis against Rice. On each of its three previous trips to the College World Series, in 1997, '99 and 2002, the small Houston school with the big academic reputation had quickly dropped two games and, as its detractors suggested, been left to grab a pulled-pork sandwich on its way out of Omaha. But with an offensive explosion in a 14-2 victory over gutty Stanford on Monday night, the Owls claimed their first national championship in any sport. "We've always had to battle the perception that we had not gotten far here," says coach Wayne Graham. "That perception has been destroyed."

Rice won the opener after Austin Davis (9) reached on a 10th-inning error, and the Owls went on to take the series. Mati Harnik/AP

Pitching was the centerpiece of Rice's team -- the Owls' 2.74 regular-season ERA was the nation's second best -- and sophomore righthander Jeff Niemann, who tied an NCAA record for the most wins (17) without a loss, was the centerpiece of the staff. Niemann, lightly recruited out of Lamar High, some 3 1/2 miles from the Rice campus, joined the Owls with a mid-90s fastball courtesy of his 6'9", 270-pound frame. He had no out pitch, however, besides a rainbow curve that Rice coaches informed him was too slow to be successful. Graham taught Niemann a slider, which he throws over the top like his fastball and which breaks down and away from righthanders.

In his first start of the season, against Texas A&M at Minute Maid Park, Niemann was touched for four runs in the first inning and was paid an angry visit by Graham. "I told him to quit worrying about spots so much and just gun it," Graham says. "He reminds me of Roger Clemens, and I told him he needed to rear back and grunt once in a while, like Roger does." Niemann quickly turned aggressive, using his fastball-slider combination to shut the Aggies down in a 10-5 win. Niemann took the same approach for the rest of the season, and in Game 1 against the Cardinal last Saturday, after a shaky first inning, he mowed hitters down, at one point retiring 16 of 17 as the Owls rallied to win in the 10th, 4-3.

In stark contrast to the gorilla ball of the late '90s -- the peak of the offensive explosion came in '98, when USC beat Arizona State 21-14 in the championship game -- pitching dominated this CWS. Teams batted .265, and there was an average of 11.6 runs per game, the lowest figures since '94. What Niemann accomplished for Rice, junior righthander John Hudgins duplicated for Stanford. A finesse pitcher with an uncanny resemblance -- in both appearance and pitching style -- to his model, Greg Maddux, Hudgins deployed a mid-80s fastball with pinpoint control and mixed it with a nibbling curve and a circle changeup to go 3-0 with a 1.88 ERA, despite throwing 350 pitches over nine days. "Not being a real power pitcher, I don't think the short rest affected me as much," Hudgins, who was named the series' Most Outstanding Player, said after limiting the Owls to three runs in seven innings in the Cardinal's 8-3 victory on Sunday. "It might have even helped my changeup."

The superiority of Rice's pitching staff was evident in the clincher. Righthander and usual No. 3 starter Philip Humber went the distance, allowing just five hits and two runs, and the Owls rode a single and five walks to a 3-0 lead they never relinquished. On a stage where power hitting normally rules, pitching was king instead.

Issue date: June 30, 2003

For more Inside Baseball see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, June 25. Click here to subscribe to SI.

 

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