It’s play-in time for the Ivy League, as Brown University hosts three other teams in a two-day playoff to see who will represent the conference in the DIAA national playoffs.

With regular-season #1 Dartmouth off to play in the Varsity Cup, it’s up to the next four teams to decide who is bound for the national quarterfinals in Pittsburgh in three weeks. Of those four, one, Columbia, has opted to concentrate on 7s, so it will be #2, #3, #4, and #6 this weekend.

Cornell (5-2 and #2 in the fall) plays Yale (2-5, #6), and Brown (4-3, #3) plays Princeton (4-3, #4).

As you can see from the various records, it’s a fairly competitive group. Dartmouth may have dominated, but the rest of the field was close.

In fact, all of the games between these four teams were extremely competitive. Yale may have finished 2-5, but they lost to Cornell 36-27, Princeton 19-16, and Brown 26-19. They are perfectly capable of upsetting Cornell. Brown and Princeton played to a virtual standstill in the fall, with Brown emerging 24-20, scoring with time virtually up to overcome a 20-19 deficit.

Alex Coben’s try may have secured the #2 seed in the play-in for Brown, but in a way it didn’t mean much as the two teams will have to do it all over again on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Cornell is probably favored, but shouldn’t count their chickens. Cornell captain and scrumhalf said his team never takes anything for granted.

“We have a chip on our shoulder,” he said. “It’s hard to travel in the Ivy League. We have a tough time getting outside, and we use all of that as fuel to be better and to compete. Two years ago we were 0-6 and graduating some of our better players and we thought we’d get worse. But we went 6-1 and now 5-2. We just started clicking as a team, with that chip on our shoulder.”

Coach Paule Barford certainly helped. He got the team working in the same direction. They will have to be moving in the same direction this weekend.

“Yale pushed us when we played them last,” said Furman. “We know we can’t look at their record. We have a job to do.”

Like a lot of teams in the Northeast, but perhaps more than most, Cornell has been snowed under. Fortunately, the Cornell rugby alumni have helped provide funds to pay for training at an indoor facility, where they’ve been able to run and work on contact.

“That’s been big,” said Furman. “We have a strong pack and we know we need to win our rucks. We found out late in the fall, especially against Harvard, that our backs can run and we’ve added a few new wrinkles there. It’s exciting for me at scrumhalf as we’re varying our attack. But being able to train indoors and get some of that work done has been important.”

Cornell’s success hinges on a team approach, but some players are more equal than others. Along with Furman, watch out for flanker/lock John Tregurtha, who will have a central role in winning ball in the breakdown and set piece, and Chris Groton, a former discus thrower/shot-putter who is still learning the game, but has been a terror in the back row.