Cal Poly Hosts BYU as We Look at the College Weekend
It's still a relatively small slate of games in men's college rugby, but it will pick up markedly soon.
Cal hosts UCSB just after beating Santa Clara 91-0 and usually in a big score like that we try to focus on one player who scored a lot or something like that, but in this case 11 different players put points on the scoreboard for Cal. Nate Comiskey did score three tries but a cadre of a relatively new Cal players showed well.
Still, Cal Head Coach Jack Clark was magnanimous.
Top D2 Players of the Fall: No. 8 The position of No. 8 is one of the largest, proportionally, in our D2 list of top players. While, based on the total number of players we're recognizing (just under 140 right now), you'd expect nine players to be named for each number on their jersey. We have 18 players with the number eight on their backs. And we've discussed that a bit in some earlier releases. There are several players here who track as locks or have seen time at flanker. Some, if they move on to play post-college might find themselves in the front row. But often a D2 team that has a big, mobile, powerful athlete will want the ball in that player's hands, and those players end up getting seen a lot, getting noticed a lot, and getting on a list such as this. So keep an eye on these guys.
Top D1AA Players of the Fall; Wing and Fullback
We have the final installment of our Top D1AA players of the fall.
Here is wing and fullback. As we have requested from people, we do accept corrections and suggestions to add. And in fact we added several to this list for various reasons. Email us here to suggest a change>>
Below also are all of the positional lists, so check them out. We've enjoyed putting this together and currently have about 125 players garnering recognition.
Top D1AA Players of the Fall; Center
Center is perhaps the largest category in our top D1AA players of the fall.
There's a lot of talent throughout the division here and not just in the championship teams.
Of course, if you think we missed someone. Let us know (which people have been doing and we're grateful for that).
NCR Maps Out How Members Can Qualify for 2024 CRC Sevens
National Collegiate has mapped out how teams can qualify for its spring-culminating tournament, the CRC, which will be held once again in late April.
It's fairly unprecedented for a US collegiate organization to have such a qualification process mapped out this early—unprecendented and, for many, refreshing.
The CRC will hold eight brackets at the Maryland Soccerplex in Germantown, Md. April 26-28. There are over 140 slots for the tournament, with 16 slots set aside for four women's brackets (Premier, DI, DII, Small College) and three men's brackets (DI, DII, and Small College) while the Men's Premier tournament is planned to have 32 teams.
Top D1AA Players of the Fall; Scrumhalf and Flyhalf
Some of the players in the halfback positions play both 9 and 10, and in that case we put a player in a position where we felt they had the most impact.
These are the scrumhalves and flyhalves we felt made the biggest contributions to their D1AA teams. Of course, as we've been saying, it's easy to miss someone so let us know if we have, indeed, let someone slip through. Email us here>>
SCRC Names Awardees, All-Conference Selections
The Southeastern Collegiate Rugby Conference has named its conference MVPs and Coaches of the Year, along with their All-Conference selections for all three divisions.
SCRC rugby is played in D1AA, D2, and Small College, so there are selections for each. Not surprisngly, NCR D1AA champion Kentucky and NCR D2 runner-up Memphis are heavily represented.
D1AA Coach of the Year
Sam Enari, Kentucky
D1AA Player of the Year
Jack Phillips, Kentucky
Top D1AA Players of the Fall; Flanker and No. 8
In case you haven't noticed, we've been listing these players in each category in different ways.
There's no ranking within these players, so we list them maybe in alphabetical order by team, or perhaps by last name, or in reverse alphabetical order. So, anyway, the point is the player listed at the top isn't necessarily considered better than the player listed at the bottom. We're just reocgnizing players that we can.
This time it's loose forward, with No. 8 separated out. A couple of players we listed up in the front row actually play a little No. 8 but we left them up there, not wanting to repeat anyone.
If you think we messed up and missed someone, that could well be true, so let us know here!
Top D1AA Players of the Fall; Lock
These locks have made a massive impact on their teams this fall.
As we said in the Front Row article, we may have missed some players, so do let us know if you think we screwed up. Also as we said, lock is a tough position in which to stand out, but we have found these players.
Congratulations to all who had such a strong fall, and remember we have spring-centric teams to cover in the spring, too.
Men D1AA College Rankings Week 13
Well they held onto #1.
Kentucky jumped to #1 in Week 8 and held tightly onto it after that. In fact, they weren't really challenged all that much.
And really there wasn't that much change in the top-ranked teams in D1AA this fall. Here's a look at the journey of the top four.
Rice is our #5 and we might see that change in the spring, but that's the one team that wasn't ranked and that shot up to a high rank.
Top D1AA Players of the Fall; The Front Row
Well here we are again with our top players of the fall in D1AA.
We've got about 100 players on our list so think about how many you'd expect per position: around 13 each for props, locks, flankers, centers, and wings, and around 7 each for hooker, No. 8, scrumhalf, flyhalf, and fullback. If you did the math on that using those exact numbers you'd get exactly 100. But the thing is, it's tough to find exactly that number for each position.
Marist College Seeking New Head Coach
Marist Men's Rugby Head Coach James Kimberly is moving on to spend more time with his family and the program is now looking for a new Head Coach.
Kimberly has overseen a strong period of success for the New York-based college and the vast majority of the team that won the Liberty Conference DII and made the national Round of 16 is back for the 2024-25 season. Of the 15 starters in the Round of 16, 14 are back next year.
The new coach will be stepping into a situation with a deep squad, the team's own grass field, recruits coming in, and support from the College. In addition, Marist is in the Liberty Conference, which has multiple levels—DII, DIAA, and DI (all under NCR). So if the program wanted to move up a division, it wouldn't have to change conference.
GRR D1A Rankings 2023-24 Week 13
Well we now wrap up the fall with D1A teams.
Overall, we don't have a ton of changes following the CRAA Fall Classic. We were tempted to move Army, UMW, and Mount St. Mary's up a spot and that would slide Arizona down to #13. Well there is going to be ample chance for the likes of GCU or UCLA (!) or Arizona to move themselves up or down. Mount St. Mary's did very well in the Fall Classic, but in the end we can't move them past UMW because MSM lost to UMW, and Army's close loss to Navy can't be ignored, either.
UCLA of course moves up after the win over Oxford.
Many of the western teams have a lot of rugby to play, but the eastern teams do, too. There's a re-emphasis on 15s in the winter-spring for those teams. Quick trivia question! Can you name the last West Coast team to win the D1A final and when? Answer at the bottom of the article.
What UCLA Beating Oxford Means
In amongst all the playoff rugby and bowl games, UCLA played a little match against Oxford University last week.
The Bruins welcomed Oxford University on the Blues’ tour of the USA. The tour also included MLR team XVs, but the marquee game (for us at GR World Headquarters at least) was against UCLA.
This Oxford team was a solid group of players, featuring cadré of Blues as well as those challenge for Blues places. Oxford University’s rugby team draws from many colleges and so has a large group of players, plays against men’s club teams as well as collegiate teams. College rugby in the UK is not the same as college rugby in the USA—there aren’t really eligibility rules and graduate students can play, so it’s not apples to apples. But this was a very, very capable (if jet-lagged) Oxford team that faced off with UCLA in Los Angeles.
Men D2 2023 Rankings Final Week
With the national championship all wrapped up here is the last rankings of the fall of 2023.
No surprise, of course, that IUP is #1, and in fact IUP was ranked #1 or #2 all season. Memphis worked their way up thanks to their results, but we were a bit hamstrung by their conference. The Tigers were so dominant in their conference it was difficult to judge where they stood nationally. Meanwhile, the Great Midwest Conference has historically been very strong, which is, in part, why Northern Iowa was ranked #1 for the last few weeks.
UNI's 4th-place finish national does bump the other Great Midwest teams down a bit. And if you ask us what is the strongest conference right now we'd probably say NEWCRC. Coast Guard gets a bump.
