It was an intriguing weekend in Men's D1 college rugby as we saw quite a few cross-divisional matchups and, perhaps, some harbingers of how things might shake out this season.
Big Rivers Teams
Iowa Central CC has a pretty deep roster these days. They ran out three sides, taking on Wayne State, Northern Iowa, and Iowa. Their "C" team lost to Iowa's XV, but the other two sides won. Head Coach Brent Nelson was relatively pleased but looked at the 38-5 scoreline against Wayne State and concluded they could have, or should have, scored more.
"Too many unforced errors," said the coach. "Our depth is one of those good-and-bad problems. Lots of quality kids here so playing time is at a premium. We're still working through some set piece stuff but we feel really good overall."
Unity combined with rugby IQ is key so Nelson's job is to challenge them. Hence upcoming games against Davenport and Arkansas State.
Thomas More ran into a bit of a headwind against Mount St. Mary's. The young Saints worked hard on defense, but perhaps stepped over the line a bit as they gave up two penalty tries in a 38-19 loss to Mount. For Mount this is their second game as a D1A side (24-0 over Belmont Abbey last week) and it was a good overall team showing. More on them in a stand-alone article.
Marian put on quite the show against Kentucky in Indianapolis, beating the D1AA side 30-18 in front of a crowd of 350. For Marian this was a welcome step forward as they look at a potential Big Rivers title. Eric Reed scored two tries while freshman Alaskan (freshman for Marian, he's been an Alaskan all his life) RJ Fine scored three in his first 15s game ever.
Clay Peters was very good and scored also.
Trine opened their season at Notre Dame on Friday night against a Fighting Irish that lost to Navy and Trinity in Dublin last week.
Notre Dame actually started a freshman at flyhalf, which you don't see too often so early in the season. The teams traded tries early on and it was 7-7 15s minutes in before prop Patrick Dufour intercepted a pass and ran it in from 45 meters like he was a fullback. After that Notre Dame started to pull away and shook off some of the silly handling errors they were making. Trine scored first in the second half to make it 36-14 but after that Notre Dame rolled. Lock Patrick Mulligan, No. 8 Jon Barnes, and left wing James Jordan all played well.
Rio Grande will play in Big Rivers this year and they went down 31-7 to Southern Virginia.
