Boxscore

Wayne Powell and Paul Millsap turned in career nights for Louisiana Tech, but it wasn't enough as Rice raced away with an 89-77 win Monday before 3,017 at the Thomas Assembly Center.

The loss dropped Tech to 7-5 overall and 1-1 in the Western Athletic Conference while Rice is now 9-3 and 1-0.

Rice blistered the nets with a 59.3 shooting percentage (32-54) for the game and hit on a red-hot 68 percent of its shots (17-25) in the second half. Tech hit on 51.6 percent (33-64) of its shots and while Powell and Millsap set new career scoring highs, it wasn't the kind of game Bulldogs coach Keith Richard was looking for.

"I hope our team learned a valuable lesson tonight," Richard said. "We're not a team that can go toe-to-toe for 40 minutes against an offense like Rice. We lost our identity out there. We forgot who were were and how we win games, and that's with good rebounding and defense, not offense."

Millsap hit on 14-of-17 shots from the floor and set new career highs with 27 points and 17 rebounds while Powell added a career-high 21-point performance.

"This hurts," Powell said. "I think we learned a lot. We need to be in a dog fight out there, fighting for rebounds and defending. Tonight we fell more into our offense, and that's not our style. That's not who we are."

The Bulldogs led as late as with 5:45 remaining before Rice's Michael Harris nailed a short jumper to give the Owls a 72-71 advantage. The Bulldogs kept trying to run with the Owls, and the result was Rice slowly pulling away.

Tech still had a chance until Jason McKrieth's 3-pointer with 1:28 remaining put the Owls up 83-74 and deflated the Bulldogs' hopes of a comeback win.

Rice turned the ball over only nine times in the contest while scoring 18 points off of 16 Tech turnovers.

The Bulldogs won the battle of the boards, outrebounding Rice 36-25, and connected on 60 percent (18-30) of their field goal attempts in the first half to take a 43-39 halftime lead over the Owls.

But the Owls turned things up in the second half, connecting on eight 3-point attempts after intermission and going 12-of-20 from behind the 3-point arc on the night.

Harris led Rice with 26 points while MCKrieth and Brock Gillespie added 20 points each with Gillespie connecting on 6-of-11 3-pointers, including a 5-of-5 performance after intermission.

"He (Gillespie) just got into a rhythm in the second half," Powell said. "We worked hard to try and deny him the ball, but he kept getting it and making them."

While Richard was proud of his team's offensive effort, he said that the Bulldogs need to realize they're a blue-collar, defensive style team.

"That was probably our best offensive effort of the season, and it wasn't good enough," Richard said. "You have to know what your real strengths are and stay with them. We didn't make enough defensive plays tonight. It showed during those final minutes who the better offensive team was."

Donell Allick added 14 points for the Bulldogs while Corey Dean finished with 10 points for Tech.

The Bulldogs return to WAC action on Thursday when Tech takes to the road to play a 9:05 p.m. game at Nevada.