Busy Weekend in Men's DII College Rugby

About 40 games are slated for this week in Men's DII college rugby, and while we expect some to be postponed or canceled because teams are struggling to bounce back from COVID shutdowns, we expect to see some good games, too.

As many as one-third of the games from last week didn't get played, but here's hoping it's better for this week.

Some games to keep an eye on:

All of New England-Wide College Rugby Conference. There are many very solid teams within this conference, and we expect there to be spirited competition. Can Sacred Heart regain their form of 2015-2019? If so, they can show it against Norwich. UMass-Lowell vs Bentley is also a good one to watch.

The Gateway teams (some of them) are struggling, so we'll see how they hang on this weekend. 

Certainly in the Great Lakes, Central Michigan (who we just profiled) against Adrian (who we saw last week) is a top-of-the-rankings clash.

Same goes for the Great Midwest, which kicks off with Whitewater at Marquette and Northern Iowa at Illinois State.

Notable—word is that Loyola of Chicago's administration is requiring masks for all players during games, which is advice that flies in the face of the evidence of how COVID spreads ... but that's Chicago for you. UPDATE: no masks for players but pretty much everyone else needs to be masked.

In Tri-State, we're interested in how the Merchant Marina Academy and RPI match up. These are two teams we think can still contend for the conference title.

(You might remember we reported that the teams in Minnesota are going through a sort of testing process to see if they can handle a 15s season. That's ongoing and the schedule will be set soon, likely after this weekend.)

Check back for score.

(NOTE: We finally pieced together the MARC schedule Hopefully accurately.)