Goff Rugby Report's recent obsession has been whether iron actually sharpens iron or not.
For the most part we at GRR World Headquarters believe it does—teams that have to struggle and that have to work their way through difficult conferences are better prepared for playoff rugby than those who have an easy time of it. There are exceptions, of course, but generally the adage holds.
Except there is an addendum to all of that. If your team has been through repeated playoff scenarios, then the regular season doesn't have to be the testing ground in the same way. A group of players who have been all the way through might well retain that understanding of what it takes.
So that brings us to the Men's D2 NCR Championship. In this final four, there are two teams that have had to battle almost non-stop to get here. That would be Norwich and Towson. Another has had a relatively smooth road, but got one crucial test and has that playoff experience. And the fourth definitely has that playoff experience. Those two would be Northern Iowa and IUP.
Semifinal #1 Towson vs Northern Iowa
On October 12 Towson lost 22-15 to Salisbury. That dropped the Tigers to 2-2 in their conference and even though the Mid-Atlantic put eight teams into their conference playoffs, with one of those spots taken up by the Cardinals Conference top D2 team, there actually were only seven spots. And Towson was in real danger of missing out. As it turned out, being within seven points of the Sharks was enough, as that bonus point bumped Towson past East Stroudsburg for the 8th seed in the playoffs.
But, with a week to prepare and some significant soul-searching, Towson arrived in the playoffs a different team.
They beat #1 seed Scranton, then got revenge over Salisbury, before taking down Villanova in the conference final. They followed that up with wins over Loyola of Chicago and Grand Valley State of Michigan. Since that loss to Salisbury the Tigers have gone 5-0 against well-ranked playoff teams, unveiling a previously moribund offense—25 points per game in the regular season, but since the MARC playoffs began it's over 38 per game. Towson has had nothing to lose since their first playoff win against Scranton.
Northern Iowa, for their part, went through what has historically been a very competitive Great Midwest Conference hardly being touched—78-17, 95-14, 38-12 (Marquette), and 99-12. In the playoffs it wasn't much different ... until the NCR quarterfinals, when UNI needed OT to beat a very powerful Montana State. Complacency? Head Coach Zeus Ramirez said it might have been. That result, he said, came at exactly the right time. His team needed to be reminded that resilience is how you win a champioinships.
