College 7s almost (almost) finished and we have a whole bunch of champions.
Last Week
Harvard won the CRAA Women's Premier 7s, showcasing some nice parity between NIRA and D1 Elite. OK, true, the D1 Elite leading teams, Lindenwood and Life, had to bounce quickly from 15s to 7s. Lindenwood came 2nd in both D1 Elite and the Premier 7s, which is tough to do. But Harvard did the double, NIRA D1 championship in the fall and the Premier 7s in the spring.
A nod to Davenport which finished 1st in NIRA D2 and then took 3rd overall in the Premier 7s. Not bad at all.
Premier 7s Order of Finish:
1. Harvard
2. Lindenwood
3. Davenport
4. Dartmouth
5. Sacred Heart
6. Life
7. LIU
8. Princeton
9. Central Washington
10. Penn State
At GRR we talk sometimes about how you don't need to play a ton of 7s to be good at 7s. This tournament flipped that around as the teams that played more 7s this spring—the NIRA teams—outperformed, overall, the D1 Elite teams (NIRA was 9-5 in games between the two).
CRAA's College-Club championship ended up with Western Washington the champions. WWU did this by playing superb defense and exploiting the mistakes that defensive pressure created. Look at Colorado mesa, a team we at GRR thought would be very dangerous in this tournament. Mesa wom their first two games 43-0 and 36-0. But against WWU CMU managed just two tries, and lost 22-12.
That put everyone on notice. Only Air Force managed to score more than two tries against the Vikins, and WWU's kicking was more successful as they held off the Falcons 19-15. Colorado State was also excellent and almost every game they played was a nailbiter: 19-15, 26-7, 14-10, 17-10, and 7-12.
College Club 7s Order of Finish:
1. Western Washington
2. Colorado State
3. Air Force
4. Colorado Mesa
5. UCLA
6. Cal Poly
7. UC Irvine
8. San Jose State
Last Week
The CRCs crowned several champions:
Men's Premier: Wheeling
Women's Premier: Brown
Men's D1: Louisville
Women's D1: Claremont Colleges
Men's D2: Maine
Women's D2: UW Eau Claire
Men's Small College: Slippery Rock
Women's Small College: Yale
What a wonderful season for Maine in their first run in D2. Claremont Colleges showed they can win on both coasts. Wheeling was excellent. Brown ... would they have the Premier 7s a week later? What about runners-up Army? Or #3 Navy. That's right, the top three teams in the Women's Premier bracket in the CRC were not NCR teams but NIRA teams once again. The #4 team? AIC, also NIRA. #5? Bowdoin, also NIRA. #6? Penn State (D1 Elite). #7? West Chester (NIRA). You have to go to #8 out of the 16 teams in the competition to find a team that played 15s in NCR.
As for the answer to that question above ... Brown did a brilliant job, but Harvard beat them twice. Those games were very close. Brown, during the spring, did beat Sacred Heart twice and lost to Dartmouth twice. So that puts Brown near the top of the group that played in Houston. Maybe 4th or 5th? You never know. What would have been wonderful would have been to see Brown, Army, Navy, AIC, Bowdoin, and West Chester in in Houston, too.
