The TCU baseball team will travel to Corpus Christi this weekend to face No. 1 Rice, Texas A&M at Corpus Christi and No. 13 Arizona State in its third preseason tournament, the Whataburger Classic.The Horned Frogs will see Rice for the second time this season on Friday afternoon as they try to avenge a 12-6 loss to the Owls in the third game of the 2006 campaign, but head coach Jim Schlossnagle was not shy in admitting the Owls’ talent.

“We’ll have to play the best game that we’ve ever played because they are way better than we are – plain and simple,” Schlossnagle said.

Junior right fielder Austin Adams said the team is up to Schlossnagle’s challenge, but needs to work on holding leads late in the game, a problem it experienced when it previously played Rice.

“I think we should have beat them last time,” Adams said. “It was one of those things; they came back and got us at the end.

“Definitely, we want some payback. The team’s offensive hitting has been going real well, and we’ve seen them before.”

Despite the pitching staff’s early struggles with consistency, the hurlers were in better form against Florida Atlantic last weekend, and senior left-hander Brad Furnish, Sunday’s scheduled starter against the Sun Devils, said the staff is focused on improving. Furnish threw a standout seven-inning no-hitter versus Stephen F. Austin Feb. 19.

“We do a lot of drills in practice, and we have been playing some top teams, so that helps us, too,” Furnish said.

Adams said TCU does not regularly look at scouting reports for tournament opponents until a couple hours before the game.

“Instead of worrying about the other team, we just try to stick to our game plan,” Adams said.

Schlossnagle said the team has one goal for the weekend: to be a competitive squad.

“We just need to play well,” Schlossnagle said. “We played well over (last) weekend, and we need to try to get back to that.