Big Second Half Sees Lindenwood Past McKendree Midwest D1A Conference powerhouse Lindenwood University hosted an intense game on its home turf at Hunter Stadium on March 22 against the McKendree Bearcats. The final score of 44-12 underscored a satisfying victory for the Lions. The game started off fairly even in the first half, as the teams traded tries and the Lions led only by the slim margin of 15-12. However, on a cold, wintry evening in St. Charles, a young Lindenwood XV hit McKendree for five tries and a 44-12 victory. The key momentum shift came early in the second half. With the score still 15-12, Lindenwood bottled McKendree up in their 22. They finally earned a penalty and opted for the lineout and driving maul, putting it over to lead 20-12.
Cal Faces Saint Mary's in Storied Rivalry Decades-long rivals Saint Mary's and Cal meet up in Moragain a game that has massive playoff and rankings implications. After losing games to BYU and Army, Cal has once again performed a turnaround, beating #1-ranked Navy in Berkeley last week to shake up the entire D1A pecking order. Saint Mary's meanwhile has as much claim to the #1 spot at the moment as anyone. Undefeated and having beaten BYU (a team that beat Cal), the Gaels are once again playing high-octane rugby. How these two teams go about their business carry few similarities. "We are polar opposites in many ways," said Saint Mary's Head Coach Tim O'Brien. The Gaels are coming off a win at Provo in a SMC-BYU matchup that O'Brien called "the highlight of our season. They are a great program and we have a great relationship with their coaches.
Pre-Playoff Put-up Time in D1A and D1AA While there are some D1A games next week, the games this week are the final salvo before the playoff seedings come out. At present, if you look at GRR's rankings, we have this in the East: Mount St. Mary's at Life Mary Washington at Navy Arkansas State at Lindenwood Davenport at Army and this in the West: Grand Canyon at Saint Mary's Cal Poly at Central Washington Arizona at BYU UCLA at Cal However ... Cal plays at Saint Mary's, a game that could move the Gaels to the overall #1, or could completely shift everything around. Is CWU still in with a chance? Yes. Life? They play BYU, so a win against them will go a long way to keeping #1. Navy? yes they could be back. The seedings in the East or West 6-7-8 realm are all up in the air. UCLA vs Cal Poly and Arizona vs Army both have a huge influence on those games. Wild final @D1ARugby weekend before the playoff seedings come out.
GRR D1A Rankings 2023-24 Week 22 The #1 team, Navy, lost over the weekend. So this week's question is: who should be #1 now? Let's look at the candidates: Navy: Remember, losing to Cal doesn't negate their body of work. The Midshipmen ran the table in Rugby East, beating Life and Notre Dame College in the process, and also beat Army (who, you'll remember, beat Army last week). Does one loss knock them off? Well it was a 23-point loss, and to a team that was ranked #9 by GRR (#7 by D1A). Cal: Beat the #1 team. That's pretty compelling. But Cal has also lost to BYU and Army. So it's not like they had a perfect record and we were just waiting for them to beat a highly-ranked team. Life: Lost to Navy in the fall but have beaten Army, Lindenwood, and Arkansas State. Navy is the only loss Life has endured and that score was 20-14.
Lindenwood Pulls Away From CWU in Top-Ranking Midweek Battle In a midweek game in Ellensburg, Wash., Lindenwood defeated Central Washington 37-22 Tuesday. This game was far, far closer than the final score might indicate. It was tied with 13 minutes to go and was still a one-score game into the final five minutes. The game was very entertaining and the scoring went back-and-forth for much of the afternoon. Central Washington opened the scoring with quick hands wide and a grubber to the corner. Lindenwood’s cover defense fell over just as the ball took a weird bounce, allowing the Wildcats to tough down. Lindenwood answered right after with a snappy breakaway down the left side—foreshadowing—and lock Alejandro Martinez Tapia galloped in to make it 5-5.
Men D1AA College Rankings Week 21 So not a lot of changes in these rankings. Things slow down in terms of volume of matches but they raise the importance level. So, really, coming up, we have these big games: March 23 San Jose State vs American River St. Thomas vs Florida State March 30 St. Thomas vs University of Florida April 6 Central Florida vs University of Florida April 13 Iowa State vs Sam Houston State Florida Playoffs April 20-21 Western Regionals with San Diego (#4), SJSU (#10), ARC (#13), and WWU (#9) over two days. Florida Playoffs May 4-5 CRAA D1AA Final CRAA Bowl Games That's basically it. Will we see a team overtake Kentucky for #1? Maybe. That team would have to blow through the playoffs in a relatively dominant fashion. But it could happen.
Saratoga U23s Win Bermuda International Sevens The Saratoga U23s won the Bermuda International 7s over the weekend, defeating Dartmouth in the final. The tournament featured 10 collegiate-level teams, including the local team, the Bermuda Stars, and early on it did seem like Saratoga and Dartmouth were on a collision course. Early on Day One, Friday, the teams tied 12-12. Through Pool Play on Friday, both Dartmouth and Saratoga came through unbeaten. Dartmouth edged Bermuda and shut out UHSP to go 2-0-1, while Saratoga won in comfortable shutouts over Bermuda and Rowan. But, interestingly, no team came through the day with a perfect 3-0 day. Iowa State beat Dartmouth II and Rowan, but were upended by Iona. Meanwhile, Iona also beat Norwich 5-0 but lost to Dartmouth II.
Sudden Death Win Sees Principia Through to CRC 7s Principia garnered a berth at the CRC 7s with a win at the KC 7s over the weekend. The Thunder Chickens ran the table, although it wasn't always easy, beating Pitt State, Drury, and Southern Nazarene by relatively comfortable margins. Iowa Central CC met them in the final. The Tritons already had confirmed a spot at the CRCs, but were not taking it easy in this tournament. They beat Colorado II, Missouri (in a close one), and Kansas State to make the final. The final itself was very tight as both teams had made the final thanks to strong defense as much as anything else. In the end, the teams were deadlocked 7-7 at full time.
And Now We Know: D1AA Playoffs San Diego beat Arizona State in emphatic fashion 41-19 Saturday to clinch the California D1AA South Conference, and get us closer to figuring out who is in the CRAA D1AA playoffs overall. In fact, we are a LOT closer ... as in we're pretty sure we know. The much-ballyhoo'd (OK, we were the ones ballyhooing it) game between Western Washington and Boise State never happened. Boise State bailed for a second time, which is enormously disappointing, and as a result WWU is the top team from the NCRC. If this isn't a shove for WWU, which is clearly the strongest team and the most interested in playing tough games in the Pacific Northwest, to move up to D1A, we don't know what is. Central Washington has to be sitting there going Do It! Which do you like better? via GIPHY or via GIPHY OK, anyway ... so that's two—San Diego and Western Washington.
California D1A Conference Wraps Up With Positives For Many The California D1A Conference has essentially completed its regular season and here are a few observations. Saint Mary's is the winner. The standings below don't reflect a result between the Gaels and Sacramento State but they didn't play that game and it's likely to be listed as a forfeit or something ... it's a good bet Saint Mary's would have won that. Cal Poly takes 2nd and has made areally strong case for being in the D1A playoffs. There have not been a lot of close losses in this league, and it's easy to take from that the idea that it hasn't been competitive. But it has. Sure, Saint Mary's won their games by wide margins, but after that there were plenty of interesting matchups. We had a tie and a 42-41 result. And look at how many four-try bonus-point matches we had—39. The average team logged 4.3 four-try games.
Cal Storms to Lead, Holds It Against Navy Cal defeated Navy 47-24 Saturday in Berkeley, handing Navy their first loss of this season, and in fact their first loss since April 10, 2022 when they lost in the D1A playoffs. The Golden Bears built a 24-0 lead in the first half, but back-to-back tries by the Mids made it a 10-point game at 48 minutes. “We are obviously very disappointed in our performance,” said Navy Director of Rugby Gavin Hickie. “We simply were not good enough today and lost to a better team.” “We appreciate the Navy team, they have been on a significant run of well-earned victories and success. They are a well put together team,” Cal head coach Jack Clark said. “I loved how determined our boys were today. We took our share of the lumps, but we fronted the challenge.” Bears Out of the Blocks The Bears and the Mids traded possession over the first 10 minutes with neither team lighting up the scoreboard.
Saint Mary's Wins Big One at BYU If there has been a knock on Saint Mary's it's been that they haven't played a lot of the major teams in the D1A Top 10. That changed this weekend as the Gaels traveled to Provo and beat BYU 38-21 in a wild one where Saint Mary's seemed in total control, only to be reminded that there's no such thing. Saint Mary's has won games by 87, 33, 65, 67, 53, 39, and 97. And while UCLA and Arizona have been sprinkled in there, most of those games are against teams further down the ranking scale. yes they played and beat Central Washington 27-26. That is their closest game by far. So you could argue they were looking for a challenge.
Davenport Makes Statement in Road Win In a result that was a bit of an upset, Davenport defeated Arkansas State 17-16 in Jonesboro Saturday. These two teams had played a deceptively close game in Grand Rapids in the fall—ASU eventually won 30 but it was a 17-8 game as late as 65 minutes in. This time, Davenport was determined not to allow a late-game points surge. As it was, the Red Wolves got their points early. At halftime Arkansas State led 10-0, but Davenport Head Coach Dustin Steedman wasn’t too bothered. “At least it was beautiful weather,” he joked. “First time in six years I have played in Arkansas in nice weather. A lot of our play going into this game was centered around our physicality. We knew they would come to play and we we did too. We also played quick, perhaps a little too quick and we kind of tired ourselves out and made some handling errors.
Shakeups in D1A After Saturday Results Almost as expected the D1A collegiate landscape has been turned on its head once more. This week's GRR D1A College Rankings>> This weekend: Cal beat Navy. Running out to a 24-7 lead at halftime the Bears cruised to a 47-24 victory. Navy of course worked to come back and scored three tries in the second half, but this was a huge showing from Cal (#9 GRR #7 D1A) over the #1-ranked team in both rankings, Navy. Cal Storms to Lead, Holds It Against Navy Another lower-ranked team winning was Davenport, which came back from a 13-0 deficit to beat Arkansas State in Jonesboro 17-16. The Panthers were ranked #11 by GRR and #10 by D1A overall, with ASU at #5/#8. Davenport Makes Statement in Road Win Those games have opened the door for a new #1 and that new #1 might be Saint Mary's. The Gaels traveled to Provo and hammered BYU 53-5 on the road.
Cal v Navy, SMC v BYU, and More in College Rugby It's a smaller but more intense weekend in D1AA D1AA Playoffs Ramifications The California D1AA North has their playoffs this weekend and the champion, as well as, possibly, the 2nd-place team will get into the Western Regionals. University of San Diego is almost guaranteed to join them and will secure that top-dog status in the Southwest with a win over Arizona State. Finally (hopefully) we will have Western Washington vs Boise State. There doesn't appear to be much snow so we should have that game. The winner is the top team in NCRC and gets into the Western Regionals. The second-place team could well get there, too, as there's a wild card. What About D1A? The BIG GAME is of course Navy at Cal.
