It's early days in the Great Midwest Conference and everyone is still in it, mostly, but some teams have logged early results with noting.

Struggling right now is Northern Michigan, which had a tough opening two weeks against Minnesota Duluth and Marquette, both losses. There's time for NMU to rebound, however, and they are perfectly capable of it.

Marquette, meanwhile, came away feeling pretty good about a 47-27 victory. Player of the game was Roy Bowler but prop and club president Easton McChesney said there's more to it than one or two guys.

"We lost five starters from last year but we really feel like we have the depth to handle that," McChesney told GRR. "And we have recruited well. We're getting more players with rugby experience, and we're now seeing guys looking for us."

Students are hearing that the Marquette rugby team is something worth being a part of, and showing up looking to learn.

"That's really important because this is a very tough conference and we will need that depth," said McChesney. "The freshmen are looking pretty good so we may be deeper this year than we were last year."

In the Great MW South, Illinois State moved to 2-0 with a 29-5 victory over Illinois-Chicago.

Tommy Canova, Cade Kearns, Nate Purcell. Dan Huber had two tries, following up on a sterling effort from the week before. Eric Jones continues to play well. 

Also starting well, UW-Milwukee shut out UW-Stout 42-0. Wisconsin-Whitewater beat UW-Platteville (why do we say UW for everyone else but 'Wisconsin' for Whitewater? One of life's great mysteries) 26-5. That's actually either a pretty hang-tough result for Platteville or a slow start for Whitewater. Certainly the Warhawks have graduated a large chunk of their roster from tge last couple of years, especially in the backline.

This coming weekend, a couple of teams idle on September 14 are back in action. Northern Illinois comes rolling back, while Minnesota-Dluth clashes with Whitewater in a top-of-the-rankings meeting that should be a barnburner. Marquette takes on Platteville and Illinois State faces Western Illinois in a key Southern Division clash

This conference isn't decided yet, not even close.