Rice gets cooked by Tulsa

There was only so much Nick Fanuzzi could do. By the time he entered the game in relief on Saturday night at historic Rice Stadium, no amount of his valiance could help the Owls escape the hole that had been excavated. Rice's defensive resilience was squandered, too, sacrificed to a three-score deficit built just beyond the midpoint of the first quarter. The second half of the 2011 season began for the Owls in a fashion reflective of their first-half exploits. There were heroic efforts scattered about the field, but not enough to overcome the turnovers and mental mistakes the Owls had hoped to leave behind. Instead, those miscues were at the core of their 38-20 Conference USA loss to Tulsa. Rice (2-5, 1-3 C-USA) committed three turnovers right out of the gate with sophomore quarterback Taylor McHargue guilty of two interceptions and a fumble. Before Fanuzzi could be summoned, Tulsa (4-3, 3-0 C-USA) led 17-0 and the wheels were off the welcome wagon. "We worked all week about starting fast. We can't have three turnovers in the first 11 plays," Rice coach David Bailiff said. "I'm proud of this football team that they kept fighting back. That's a tough way to start, but they hung in there. I thought Nick Fanuzzi did a fabulous job coming off the bench and calming us." Fanuzzi, who also spelled an ineffective McHargue three weeks ago in a loss at Southern Miss before springing into action in the fourth quarter last weekend when McHargue was concussed at Marshall, delivered in a fabulous way. He passed for 234 yards and a touchdown despite facing unrelenting pressure, routinely standing in the pocket to deliver passes as defenders closed in. He twice helped Rice shave the deficit to 11 points, including with 5:47 remaining when Turner Petersen capped a 10-play, 76-yard drive with a two-yard scoring run. Trailing 31-20, Bailiff contemplated an onside kick that, if recovered, would have made the final moments far more dramatic. But Tulsa shifted its coverage alignment and Bailiff opted to kick away. Three minutes later, Tulsa quarterback G.J. Kinne connected with Ricky Johnson for a 41-yard pass play to put the finishing touches on the win. "We had one called and we just audibled out of it," Bailiff said. "It wasn't the look that we were looking for. They'd given us a couple other looks." Fanuzzi led the Owls to a pair of first downs on his opening series before a collapsing pocket resulted in a third-down sack and subsequent punt. When he returned behind center he steered Rice on a scoring surge capped by a Chris Boswell field goal. With the first half winding down, Fanuzzi escaped pressure in the pocket while keeping his eyes downfield, a senior moment rewarded when he spotted tight end Luke Willson breaking free down the far sideline. Fanuzzi delivered an accurate pass and Willson did the rest, completing a 40-yard catch-and-run that pulled the Owls to within 24-10 just prior to intermission. Although the Owls stumbled through the same woes that have plagued them all season offensively inconsistent pass protection, dropped passes, critical penalties Fanuzzi kept the pilot light lit. His performance was a flashback to his first season at Rice, one filled with promise, but derailed by an injury at Oklahoma State on Sept. 19, 2009. "Coming into this year I've known my role and prepared myself as if the opportunity would come, that I'd be ready and not be surprised and be able to help out my team to the best of my ability," said Fanuzzi, an Alabama transfer who lost his starting job to McHargue prior to last season. "Against Southern Miss that was definitely good preparation of getting in there, getting back on the field and getting some reps and just getting in the game again. It definitely helped out a little bit. "Throughout the years, you're going to do some good things and you're going to do some bad things, and you realize in your fourth, fifth years of playing college ball that you're not always going to play your best and you're going to make mistakes. You're going to learn, and you've got to deal with what you do bad, the stuff that happens and work with it the best you can. Staying in there, taking hits and throwing the ball down the field, that's part of the game." Bailiff was non-committal regarding whether Fanuzzi had done enough to get the starting assignment against the Houston Cougars on Thursday night in the annual Bayou Bucket game. McHargue, whose issues with ball security prompted his wearing gloves on both hands against Tulsa, has been inconsistent for the balance of his second season as starter. Before allowing a pair of lengthy scoring drives in the fourth, the Owls defense held the line long enough for the offense to rally. After parlaying those early turnovers into that 17-0 lead, Tulsa scored just once more before the final period: a Willie Carter 64-yard pass play 51 seconds before Fanuzzi and Willson (seven receptions for 104 yards) hooked up. In the interim, the Owls forced four three-and-outs, recovered a Kinne fumble for a touchback, held on downs at their 33-yard-line and dodged a bullet when Kevin Fitzpatrick pushed a third-quarter field goal left. During one seven-possession stretch, Rice held Tulsa scoreless six times. The avalanche of turnovers in the first proved too calamitous. "After that, our defense held strong throughout the middle of the game," said Owls sophomore safety Paul Porras, who posted a career-high 15 tackles and forced the Kinne fumble safety Tanner Leland recovered. "I really think our defense played really strong for most of the game, it's just some bad situations we were put in at the beginning. We almost had an opportunity to force a couple more turnovers, and we just need to capitalize. That's the biggest thing that we didn't do." Follow me on Twitter at FSH_Owls