Another Bird Fight: UTSA hosts the Rice Owls this weekend
Roadrunners look to get first conference win against a Rice team that is 1-1 in conference
A month ago telling someone that UTSA would be looking up at Rice in the Conference USA West standings would have led that someone to believe you weren't quite all there. Unless they were a Rice fan in which case they'd sign up for that in a heartbeat.
Yet after a pair of losses to Southern Miss and North Texas, UTSA does indeed find themselves looking up at the Owls from the Harvard of the South aka Rice. This weekend the Owls will bring their 1-1 conference record (A 31-14 win over UTEP and 13-7 loss to FIU has gotten them there) to the Alamodome in hopes of keeping UTSA down in the conference basement with the other UT-system school in C-USA.
Outside of conference the Owls are 0-4 but that hasn't fooled Frank Wilson and the Roadrunners.
"Rice has played some good teams, Stanford, Pitt, Houston and Army. They played them well," Wilson said. "You look at their conference play they were competitive with FIU and they beat UTEP by a large margin."
On the season the Owls have been outscored 218-70 and their offense is averaging 298.5 yards per game. On the other side of the ball the Owls defense has been giving up 424.3 yards per game.
Rice has used two different quarterbacks and a total of four players have attempted a pass for the Owls this season. It appears they have settled on Sam Glaesmann as the QB1. Glaesmann is 22-for-45 this year with 229 yards passing and one touchdown in three games. He has also thrown two interceptions.
The Roadrunners have a chance to exorcise the demons of the past two weeks with a strong performance against the Owls. Offensively the Owls turn the ball over more than they take it away, which should give opportunities to the Roadrunner defense to give the ball back to Dalton Sturm and the Roadrunner offense.
UTSA will want to put on a good show for the homecoming crowd but Rice won't lie down and give the game to the Roadrunners. The boys of San Antonio will have to fight for the win but eventually they should be able to overpower their rivals from the Bayou City.
Prediction: UTSA 31 Rice 14.