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Rashee Rice is making waves for SMU, and all eyes will be on him in rivalry showdown vs. TCU

TCU coach Gary Patterson conceded that the Horned Frogs “probably should’ve recruited” SMU’s star receiver.

UNIVERSITY PARK — TCU head coach Gary Patterson was asked about the comments, not about the player, but before he could defend Fort Worth and offer his rebuttal, Patterson decided to talk a little bit about SMU wide receiver Rashee Rice.

“Rashee Rice is a good football player,” Patterson said on Tuesday, about an hour after Rice lighted a fire to the Iron Skillet rivalry game by saying TCU was scared to play SMU a year ago, among other things. “Probably should’ve recruited him. Should’ve offered him, but we didn’t. I can’t remember the reason why.”

Recruiting, as Patterson alluded to, is filled with hindsight. It’s an inexact science, where five-star certainties sometimes fizzle out, and under-recruited diamonds in the rough can shine bright.

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Rice was neither. He fell somewhere in the middle. He was a three-star recruit with a reported 23 scholarship offers out of high school, but the Richland alum — playing roughly 15 miles from Amon G. Carter Stadium — never got one from the Horned Frogs.

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This week, that’s relevant. Not only because Rice and SMU will play TCU in a Battle for the Iron Skillet, but because Rice has stood out in a crowded wide receiver room, becoming a game-saving playmaker and perhaps SMU’s most potent receiver through three weeks.

“The biggest thing for him, I think, is he’s gotten to a place where he just really competes,” SMU head coach Sonny Dykes said of Rice, who has 10 catches for 207 yards and four touchdowns through three games. “At the end of day, so much of playing wide receiver and defensive back is those battles are won by the guy who competes the hardest … if you fight harder than he does, you’re going to come up with more plays, and that’s his mentality right now.”

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There are two reasons for that: one, Rice has displayed throughout his entire career; the other, he’s developed in his time at SMU.

Richland High School coach Ged Kates first saw Rice’s potential when Rice was in middle school. He noticed Rice’s immediate athleticism, but more importantly he saw something else.

“Rashee is extremely intelligent,” Kates said. “There are a lot of guys with athletic ability that their intelligence doesn’t translate onto the field or court, or whatever. Rashee’s does.”

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It helped Rice, even early on at Richland, digest concepts and turn them into big plays. Mastering that allowed him to also deviate from plans when necessary, finding holes in the zone when available and breaking free on scramble drills, even if the exact route he ran wasn’t in the playbook. It’s called sight adjustments, and it helped Rice catch 33 touchdowns and record more than 2,800 receiving yards in three seasons at Richland.

Richland High School wide receiver Rashee Rice (4) gets a big gain during the first quarter...
Richland High School wide receiver Rashee Rice (4) gets a big gain during the first quarter as Richland High School hosted Aledo High School in a 5A Division II, Region I final playoff game at The Ford Center at The Star in Frisco on Saturday, December 9, 2017. (Stewart F. House/Special Contributor)(Stewart F. House / Special Contributor)

“He is gifted at that,” Kates said of Rice’s sight adjustment ability. “And it turns a 4.2-second [40-yard dash] guy into a 4.5 guy, and it turns a 4.5 guy into a 4.3 guy, and he’s one of those.”

At SMU, Rice’s physical speed has caught up to his mental processing. He said when he first arrived on campus freshman year he could squat about 345 pounds. The last time he maxed out he did 505 pounds.

“During this winter I overworked myself to get faster and faster,” recalled Rice, who said he wasn’t lying when he claimed his 40-yard dash is now around 4.4 seconds. “You’re going to be seeing that during the season a lot.”

We already have. Last week, Rice had two touchdown catches, including a 41-yard in-breaking route where he caught the ball and then separated from the shadowing Louisiana Tech defender.

His best play, though, didn’t show up in the stat sheet, but showed the combination of his mental, physical and competitive abilities. With no time on the clock, Rice sprinted to the corner of the end zone, changed course and headed right toward a crowd of Louisiana Tech defenders.

The former Richland basketball player leaped, timing it perfectly, and hit the ball to SMU senior Reggie Roberson for the game-winning touchdown.

“It was just one of the greatest plays I’ve seen a guy make,” said Dykes, who has been a coach since 1994.

Tight end Grant Calcaterra, also in the end zone for that play, added: “It was unbelievable … I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a play like that.”

The hope, for SMU, is that Rice can continue to build on his impressive first three weeks, starting this Saturday against TCU. Rice didn’t play against TCU as a freshman, and last year’s game was postponed and ultimately never made up.

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“Now junior year I get to come out and I get to ball back in Fort Worth where I went to high school,” Rice said. “You know I can’t wait for that.”

Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.