Day One of the men's brackets in the R7CC collegiate sevens championships is in the books and here's a quick rundown of what went on.
The Setting
Kennesaw State University is hosting the event with six fields in action on Saturday (mercifully dropped down to four for Sunday). Fans were able to move around the complex to see teams playing wherever they competed, but the stadium was the center of the action with 25 games held on that surface.
It was very warm and also somewhat humid and taking care of the players—finding water, sports drinks, shade, and getting them into cool areas—was hugely important. Teams that managed those conditions well did well.
Men's Gold
The D1A teams played in Men's Gold in four pools of four. Usually what happens there is the top team is 3-0, the 2nd team 2-1, and so on. But that only happened half the time.
Lindenwood dominated Pool A with Evan Williams playing some inspired rugby and Tyren Al-Jiboori enjoying a big day. The Lions allowed just the one try. Clemson produced a bit of a surprise win over Penn State but the emotion of that win perhaps drained them a bit. Arizona came out as the other quarterfinalist, enjoying several key poaches by EJ Freeman to beat Clemson in the afternoon to end up 2-1.
Saint Mary's and Davenport played a wild one in which Davenport scored with less than a minute to go to lead 21-14. For a while some though it was only 19-14, giving Saint Mary's a chance to win it at the death. They did score, working some smart contact work and careful offloads to go in under the posts. The kick tied it and both the Panthers and the Gaels ended up 1-0-1 with a game to go. Davenport beat Santa Clara, and then Saint Mary's held off a tough Navy side. Saint Mary's took the pool on the tiebreaker.
Central Washington started a bit flat against Texas A&M and looked shaky against a difficult Ohio State side in a 14-14 tie. UCLA, despite being without Lucas Lacamp, who is with the USA 7s team.
@UCLA_RUGBY looking good even as they miss a @USARugby - level performer. @Rugby7CCpic.twitter.com/Zkor3j5ySq
— Alex Goff (@goffrugbyreport) May 15, 2022
But while the Bruins seemed set to go 3-0, Central burst through for a key late try and beat them 19-12 to take Pool C. Ohio State just missed out on a quarterfinal spot.
In Pool D there were surprises, too. Life University did well enough, although sometimes the tries seemed hard to come by. They did hold opponents to only two. But Indiana, which was touted in these pages as a contender, saw Cal Poly score a late one and the Mustangs pipped the Hoosiers. Cal Poly went on to hammer Air Force 36-5 to book a quarterfinals spot.
