NCAA baseball day 2

It was a long and somewhat frightening afternoon here in Houston. Prarie View and their speed merchants and a little timely power from Arthur Christal jumped to a 5-1 lead over Rice in the 3rd. Brian Friday's 2-run homer in the bottom of the 3rd kept Rice in the game at 5-3. However, a number of scoring chances were lost in the middle innings by the Owls inability to get a timely hit. Things came apart for Prarie View in the 8th. With the bases loaded and no one out in the top of the 8th with a chance to bury the Owls, Wilford White grounded into an odd 6-2-3 double play with the second out resulting from runner's interference because White was inside the baseline. Bryce Cox came in a shut the door on the Panthers to keep it 5-3. Aaron Luna homered in bottom of the 8th with Joe Savery aboard to tie the game at 5-5. The bottom of the ninth rally was began with a walk and hit batsman followed by an error on 3rd baseman on an attempted sacrifice. Josh Rodriguez singled to left to drive home Tyler Henley for the 6-5 win.

Elsewhere, the Houston Cougars lost a pitcher's duel to Wichita State 2-1 in Norman and the TCU Horned Frogs upset the hosting Oklahoma Sooners. The Vanderbilt Commodores got good pitching and 3 home runs to beat Michigan 5-2. At the time of this writing, it appears Vandy will take on hosting Georgia Tech as they are up on Stetson 7-0 in the 6th. In Fayetteville Oklahoma State methodically dispatched Princeton 4-1 while Oral Roberts rallied to beat Arkansas 4-3 in extra innings setting up an Oklahoma showdown in the winner's bracket game.

No Rice game today due to rescheduling around rain so more attention will be paid to Vandy and the ORU-OSU game.