Big Results for Loyola, UNI in Great Midwest

09.25.2023College Men

Loyola of Chicago improved to 2-0 with yet another fairly comfortable win, beating Illinois State 50-15.

This comes on the heels of Loyola's 69-14 defeat of Illinois-Chicago a week ago. Is that enough to consider Loyola the front-runner in the Great Midwest South? Yes, yes it might be. But they do still have a tough University of Chicago and a bit of a wild card in Northwestern University on the horizon.

"Saturday was a great team win," said Loyola Head Coach Sal Carfagno. "We were able to work our structure, dominate in our scrums and lineouts, and held them well on defense. ISU is a great, physical team and we matched that well."

It was a hot day and that challenged both teams' fitness. But Loyola was up to the challenge.

"We still have a lot of work to do as we ramp up the season," said Carfagno. "We are continuing to make small strides towards our goals. Loyola Chicago seems to be considered the underdog by many still. We are proving every week that we are deserving of being considered one of the best teams in DII Rugby."

No. 8 Zack Nkadi was player of the game for Loyola and made several big breaks. First-year player Zach Acton was impressive, especially on defense, and Loyola's deep three has been excellent.

"It's always nice when the majority of your tries are scored by your wingers," said Carfagno.

Northern Iowa, meanwhile, won quite impressively 59-5 over Marquette. This has been a good rivalry between the two teams for some years, so UNI's winning margin was a bit of a head-turner.

UNI captain Jentry Staack said the game was more difficult than the score might indicate.

"Marquette has a lot of strength in their pack," said Staack. "The first 10 to 15 minutes of the match we were pretty much at a standstill."

But one of things about Northern Iowa is that they kicked off their season with a little tournament against three D1 teams—Kansas, Colorado State, and Oklahoma. Those games gave the Northern Iowa players an idea of what a higher standard, or at least a more physical team, would look like.

"That weekend was a really good weekend," said Staack. "It was a really good time for us to develop and learn our structure and get things rolling without having too much pressure. Some of our starters are a little bit new to the game, and having those guys get their minutes was really useful. You get a better feel for the game and it's something you can’t replicate unless you are playing games."

What that meant in this past week's games against Marquette is that UNI could handle the difficult, deadlocked period of the game and patiently wait for the opportunity to bring the wood. With more depth in the lineup, and all of those players having enjoyed at least some challenging playing time against those D1 teams, UNI was able to absorb some early injuries, and finish strong.

"We have a lot more depth and guys can step into different roles," said Staack. "We have a lot of different dudes being able to different things on the field. We have more size in our pack this year and we think that will have more of an impact."

With forwards captain Garrett Getz hitting rucks and leading by example, wing Nick Marker crossing the tryling multiple times, and Mason Burr coming on early at fullback and making some key plays, the tries started to flow.

"Basically once we got going and started scoring, we just started putting up points," said Staack. "Our endurance and depth allowed us to play hard for 80 minutes. We showed some grit and the subs really stepped up."

So UNI has started 1-0, and joining them up in the North Division is Wisconsin Whitewater, which handled UW-Platteville 33-10.

We're still waiting to see Chicago, Northeastern, and UW-Milwaukee to take the field for a conference game.