For the fans that travelled from Texas to witness Rice take on the Oakland Golden Grizzlies, it might be a long drive home.

The Grizzlies threw it on thick early, taking out the Owls 77-70 in the third round of the CollegeInsider.com tournament to advance to the Summit League’s first post-season final-four appearance.

“I’m as happy as you can be,” Greg Kampe, head coach, said. “I told them (in the locker room), we made it to a final four.It’s not the big dance, it may be a little dance. But I don’t care if its the old folks home’s dance … no team in our league has (made it to the final four) before.”

Senior guard Reggie Hamilton finished with 30 points and was a perfect 14-for-14 from the free -throw line. This was his 10th-straight game of 29 points or more.

Freshman center Corey Petros was tied for second in scoring with 16 points and seven rebounds.

He credited the rest of the team’s awareness for getting him involved.

“It all starts from the guards with them looking for me,” Petros said. “They did a great job looking for me down low.”

Junior forward Drew Valentine had 13 point and seven rebounds. Ryan Bass added 10 points and four steals.

After Petros put Oakland on the board with the opening possession, the Grizzlies didn’t take their foot of the gas for the rest of the first half.

For the first three minutes, Oakland was 4-of-5 from the field, a different look considering the slow starts of the team in the earlier opening rounds of the CIT.

Aided by a 10-2 run within the first 10 minutes and a 12-0 run with 3:25 minutes left in the first half, Oakland’s offense was nothing but efficient with shooting 56.7 percent from the FG.

The Grizzlies sent Rice into halftime with an 18 point deficit.

“Our first half was flawless,” Kampe said. “It was textbook Oakland basketball against  a (good) Conference-USA school.”

Even with the hot shooting of the first half, Oakland didn’t start the second half quite the same.

The Grizzlies opened the half shooting 2-of-9 from the field and let Rice take advantage by letting them go on a 10-1 run. Oakland failed to hit 10 three pointers for the first time in seven games, going just 4-of-18 from outside the arc.

Rice was able to cut the OU lead to as little as three, but Oakland never let them take fully take over.

“We were getting great looks at the basket, we just couldn’t knock them down tonight,” Hamilton said. “Like Coach (Kampe) said, ‘sometimes that’s going to happen.’ Fortunately we still pulled out the win even with us not making shots.”

The Grizzlies ended a 17-straight winning streak for Rice when they outrebound their opponent.

Even though this is the first meeting between Rice and OU, the Owls have a 4-3 against the current Summit League membership.

Their last matchup was against the departing Oral Roberts in the Las Vegas Invitational in December 2010.

The Grizzlies will face the winner of the Utah State and Loyola Marymount game on Wednesday March 21.

“This a special season,” Kampe said. ”I can’t tell you how proud I am of this team.”