UTEP's trip to Rice on Thursday won't lack for story lines, as became evident in Dana Dimel's longest press conference of the year that kicked off a short week.
For Dimel, the Saturday-Thursday turnaround is the quickest of his long career, though UTEP has matched this before, most recently in 2012. This could be the Miners' last game against Rice, as the Owls are leaving for the American Athletic, though Dimel proposed future non-conference games between the programs.
There is a notable recent history between the teams in Houston, with the Miners breaking a 20-game losing streak there in 2018 before a game-day cancellation of the contest in 2020 when UTEP said a number of players had false-positive COVID tests administered by Rice's preferred testing outfit.