[Rice University Athletics Scrapbook: 1987-1988] Page: 2
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ROBERT HUBBLE
Hitting back
Owls’ Hubble gets to dish out punishment
By JACK AGNESS
Post Sports Writer
By JACK AGNESS
Post Sports Writer
Amid a great deal of friction, the Hubbles
moved to Kerrville for better exposure. The
Medina superintendent accused Tivy High of
recruiting Robert.
Hubble played football and basketball and
high-jumped on the track team. Sure enough,
Rice, Houston, Texas and Texas A&M beat a
path to his front door, but the tenacity of the
Owls’ Gordon Norwood won out.
and refractured his arm. He was lost for the
season.
Coach Homer Rice requested an extra year
of eligibility for Hubble, who was declared a
hardship case, and the Southwest Conference
office approved it. So, Hubble has four foot-
ball seasons ahead of him.
RICE WENT 1-10 in 1977, but that’s nothing
new. The Owls haven’t celebrated a winning
season since 1963. Since Iowa State, Texas,
Oklahoma and LSU are Rice’s first four oppo-
nents in 1978, the future is shaky.
However, Hubble isn’t ready to surrender.
"It comes down to attitude, period,” he says.
"Texas doesn’t have that many great ath-
letes, but they think they’re great. That’s
why they win. We’ve got to convince our-
selves we can play anybody.”
Robert’s roots are in Medina, rather than
Kerrville, where he attended high school his
senior year.
"Medina isn’t even a incorporated town,”
he says candidly. "It’s a village. That’s what
it really is, and it's 13 miles from the nearest
town.”
The Hubble homestead is located on a
small farm. All of Robert’s brothers and sis-
ters attended Medina High, a Class B school
with an enrollment of 202 (kindergarten
through the 12th grade).
Rice takes to the air
AFTER HUBBLE was named or the All-
State basketball team in his junior year, he
convinced his mom and dad Kerrville would
be a more suitablehworking base to lure the
big-time college scouts.
man for the starting tight end job in spring meiee (LSU won 77-0) in the third quarter,
football practice At last, Hubble can hit
team. The contact was the best we’ve
had this spring, but we were still making
mistakes.”
On the point system, the offense won
62-44.
Cr «ch Rice said the tentative date for
the spring game is Friday, April 14. But,
if Rice Stadium is being fitted with a
new artificial rug, the game will be
scrapped.
Coach Rice wasn’t as enthusiastic as
Alborn. "The defense was hitting good;,
and the scheme was good and sound,” he
said. "But, offensively, we’ve movec |
around and added some things, and itA
caught up with us this week. There were J
a lot of good things and a lot of bad’
things.
“Our brightest spot is our wide receiv-
ers, Cunningham, David Houser and
Joey DiQuinzio. And we’ve still got Dar-
rell Mouton, Charlie Taylor (who are
competing on the track team) and Hosea
Fortune (an incoming freshman).
Wes Hansen booted field goals of 37
and 35 yards, had another blocked and
saw a bad snap abort a fourth tone.
Linebacker Robert Williamson picked up
the blocked ball and returned it 55 yards *
for a TD.
DiQuinzio, Houser and Cunningham
each caught six passes. Their yardage
totals were 114, 80 and 78.
Hubble’s three brothers were super ath-
letes, but Medina was so far back in the
sticks they never got any recognition. They
might’ve been fine college athletes, but the
_ sc9u4bearing-4he-sehekarshipr-offecs-heve
could find Medina on the map.
back and have no fear of being penalized.
“Football’s different,” says Hubble, who is
the baby in a family of 10 children. “You
have padding and you can usually see the
blow coming. In football, you expect to be hit.
You aren’t expecting to be knocked down on
the floor in basketball, unless you take a
charging foul or something.”
Hubble’s freshman football season was
even curtailed when he suffered a hairline
fracture in his arm during a kickoff return
session in preseason practice.
“And we were just going half-speed,” said
Hubble, grimacing.
He was out for four weeks, before he plead-
ed with the coach for a chance to play in the
LSU game at Baton Rouge last September.
Permission granted, Hubble went into the
In the first Baylor game, Rice basketball
player Robert Hubble caught an elbow to the
jaw that sent him sprawling on the floor As
he lay there dazed, a second Baylor man
stepped in his face
The 19-year-old freshman whiz from Kerr-
ville was helped to the bench and examined
for broken bones. He escaped with cuts inside
his mouth.
At Aggieland, Hubble went for a loose ball
and was kneed in the head. He was so
“fuzzy,” he removed himself from the game.
When NIT champion Texas came calling at
Autry Court, an aggressive Longhorn player
ran over Hubble and left him prone — a
glassy-eyed wretch. But Robert took the foul.
In turn, he took himself out of the game.
Even though he is 6 feet 9 inches and 225
pounds, Hubble is growing up in ? hurry.
RIGHT NOW, he’s battling Darny New-
"If I have a strong point at tight end,” he
says, “it’s my blocking. But I like to catch
the ball, too. Tight end is the most versatile
position on the team, because you have to
block, catch and run decoy routes.”
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*
Dressed in shoris, quarterback Randy
Hertel stood around with a clipboard in
his hand Saturday morning and watched
the Rice Owls scrimmage
“He has a slightly sprained knee,” ex-
plained Coach Homer Rice, "so we
thought it best to hold him out today,
anyway.”
Added Steve Moore, who recruited
Hertel out of Los Angeles, Calif., “He
better be all right, because he’s our
franchise.”
En Hertel’s absence, Mark Snyder and
Eert Hoffman took to the air.
Ebiyder completed 21 of 36 passes for
BPyards while Hoffman connected on 19
—34 for 239 yards He also passed for the
only touchdowns — both to Doug
Cunningham.
There was one interception, which
linebacker Frank Wilson returned for a
touchdown. He also made three great
hits and caused a fumble in only his sec-
ond week of work.
A late arrival because of knee sur-
gery, Wilson put a gleam in Coach Ray
Alborn ‘s eyes The new defensive coordi-
nator singled out Wilson for his efforts
and added, "Any time we get that kind
of contact out of the defensive people,
we’ve got to have a pretty good football
When Hubble scored 18 points and got as
many rebounds in the Texas high school all-
star basketball game, a new wave of scouts
showed up in Kerrville.
But Norwood already had Hubble’s namA
on the dotted line of a football letter. f|
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[Rice University Athletics Scrapbook: 1987-1988], book, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1507527/m1/2/?q=american+indian: accessed July 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.