Tulane Defense Should Hold Edge in Critical Rice Matchup

The Tulane Green Wave officially opened as underdogs against the Rice Owls, which is really telling. The Owls have one win this season and are winless in their American Conference slate.

But the Green Wave are looking to prove that they’re not a team who is going to allow their opponent to put up a 60-burger ever again. The good thing about Rice’s offense is that it’s one that’s largely familiar to Tulane, and an attack they handled fairly well against the Army Black Knights.

The Owls have a new head coach in Scott Abell, who brought over the gun triple option from where he coached the best win percentage in program history at Davidson College.

It operates out of the shotgun and employs the triple option offense where he either hands it off to the back, keeps it, or pitches it quick to their motion guy.

Against Army, the defense had it handled. They allowed a solid amount of yardage on the ground, but their red zone defense stood tall, and they held the Black Knights to 20 points, their lowest point total of the season.

It relies on some combo blocks and that’s something this defense should hopefully be used to.

They have to get past the psychological effect of what happened last weekend, but it’s easier doing that knowing that it’s a type of offense that you have proven capable of handling and shutting down this season.

That might mean that we see a bit less of the defensive backs in the spear role again, and more of Dalton Hughes as the third linebacker out there. He had a season-high seven tackles against Army that he’s only so far matched against the Memphis Tigers and had a whopping five of his 10 solo tackles.

There’s no denying the talent of fellow linebackers Dickson Agu or Makai Williams, either. It’s a game plan that favors the linebacker talent, and one that the coaching staff of the Green Wave has strong familiarity with root ties to key programs who run that scheme.

That should bode well for a bounce back by this defense who looked as lost out there as they ever have against the Tulsa Golden Hurricane.

We’ve seen them be much better than that this season, and that capability didn’t suddenly dissipate in a puff of flames, though it seemed to do so temporarily last Saturday.

This is a get-right game for the Wave, and one that favors their defensive scheme.