Central Washington and BYU battled to a tense, dramatic tie Saturday in a rain-soaked Provo, Utah.

Central got off to a good start, scoring within three minutes, launching from a lineout to put Calvin Liulamaga over. Lewis Hollidge's conversion made it 7-0. After holding off BYU for a few minutes, Central was then able to get out of trouble and extend their lead, this time Jack Wendling bursting his way through to make it 12-0.

Moments later a bruising run from flanker Alex Cleary set up a nice interplay within the backs to see Noah Wright over. Just like that it was 17-0.

But BYU was not discouraged and the Cougars exploited an error to start their comeback. A deep restart migth have been allowed to go straight into touch, but instead the Central back three tried to keep the ball in play. A foot stepped on the line and BYU had a lineout 12 meters out. The Cougars won that ball and mauled it quick as you please over the line, with flanker Jacob Littlefield doing the honors. 

The Cougars gave three back on a silly penalty—playing the ball on the ground in the ruck right in front of the ref—and Hollidge was only too happy to take those three points. But handling kicks started to be a bit of a bête noire for BYU.

A deep kick to the CWU 22 was handled slowly and no one saw fullback Connor Olvera racing in to charge down the clearance kick. The ball rolled tantalizingly to the tryline and Olvera kicked it ahead and fell on it to score BYU's second try.

Then BYU got nicely out of trouble with a kick, won the ball at halfway, and a superb box kick from scrumhalf Dylan Parry landed between two Wildcats. The rugby ball is a funny shape and it took a sideways bounce, someone slipped on the wet ground trying to corral it, and flanker Caleb Johnston was the man to charge in to dive on it.

So going into halftime, CWU found themselves up by just a point at 20-19 when they at one point led 20-5.

It got worse for Central as a nicely-taken lineout and maul put prop Billy Tenney over. A penalty goal later on and it was 27-20 BYU.

The Wildcats didn't fold, however, and worked their way nicely into BYU territory. There they identified a defensive mismatch, with only two BYU defenders covering four Wildcats on the weak side. Wendling took the ball, dummied to fix those defenders on the support runners, and galloped in untouched from 22 meters.

Hollidge kicked the extras and it was 27-27.

But the rain, fatigue, and desperation proved too much as the final ten minutes or so saw no more scoring. Each side had opportunities, but it wasn't to be and the game ended in a tie.

"I can't fault our guys' effort today," CWU Head Coach Todd Thornley said. "But effort does not always translate into execution. We started well but let silly mistakes creep in and gave BYU a ton of momentum. Full credit to them [BYU], they made us pay, and we struggled to fire a shote in the second half. Mistakes meant we could not get out of our own half efficiently in tough conditions and we were very lucky to hold onto the draw. Again, our young tight five get to learn valuable lessons that you cannot buy and we will continue to chip away and make some jumps performance wise heading into this week."

BYU 27
Tries: Littlefield, Olvera, C. Johnston, Bi. Tenney
Convs: Hammer 2
Pens: Bigelow

CWU 27
Tries: Wendling 2, Liulamaga, Wright
Convs: Hollidge 2
Pens: Hollidge

Full game here: