While GRR's #1 Kentucky and #9 Virginia Tech are both idle this weekend, our #2 through #8 are all in action.
OK ... #4 Tennessee's game has been understandably canceled seeing as it was against Florida, and there's this hurricane ravaging the state so we won't be seeing any teams traveling much as the people dig out from the devastation.
We have four games where both teams are ranked. Columbia vs Yale is a huge game in the Liberty D1AA conference. Columbia is 3-0 while Yale is 3-1 (#28 vs #13). Yale's astonishing defense has seen them allow fewer than eight points a game. Columbia may be undefeated, but all of their games have been really close. Their most lopsided game was last week over U. Buffalo, and that was 21-3. Benji Barnes, Nate Dahlstrom, and Talon Krieger have led the Columbia surge, These teams do not have common opponents, but it's worth noting that Yale's lone loss was to current conference leaders UMass.
Clemson is looking to make a move in the SCRC and they visit South Carolina (#8 vs #12). Clemson is coming off a 45-20 win over Georgia which was in turns good and not-so-good.
"In the first half we played well and took our opportunities," said Head Coach Troy Hall. "The second half was very scrappy; lots of mistakes. We didn't capitalize and finish."
But overall, said Hall, it was a good win in their conference opener and they now have won three matches in a row.
"It puts us in a solid position," said Hall.
In the MARC James Madison plays West Chester (#21 vs #31). JMU is coming out of a tie with Virginia Tech. "If we keep playing together as a team and having the right mindset, I don't think there's any stopping us," JMU club president Rew Twomey told GRR.
Things are still in their infancy in the MARC South. Virginia Tech still leads with a 2-0-1 record. After that JMU is 1-0-1, Maryland (idle this weekend) is, like West Chester, 1-1. So the upshot of this game is that JMU can move into a virtual tie with Virginia Tech with a good win, or they can be dragged back into the mire if West Chester wins, making it a three-team chase for 2nd.
Perhaps the most compelling game in D1AA this weekend is Boise State at Western Washington. After a lot of bouncing back and forth between organizations, the D1AA teams in the Pacific Northwest have decided to be CRAA. This makes sense seeing as D1AA has split somewhat over geographic lines Boise State players had told GRR a couple of years ago that they wanted to play a bowl game in NCR because if they had opted to go into the playoffs it could have cost them about $100,000. With CRAA's spring D1AA playoffs carrying a west coast bracket, and half the league playing CRAA anyway, the switch made sense.
Now we have the first week of NCRC conference play and we've got two of the major contenders. Tom Keay, Mitch Bruno, James Hodges, and Parker Mallot lead a Boise State side that draws heavily from Northern California high school programs. The #23 Broncos have already beaten Utah State and the University of Utah in warmups, but those warmups also brought some injuries. Western Washington, ranked by GRR at #6, has brought in a fairly strong freshman recruiting class and they were CRAA D1AA 7s champs last year, and are still trying to nail down that elusive 15s title. WWU warmed up against two local clubs but their comfortable victory didn't test them too much. So, a lot of questions are to be answered this Saturday, and we're here for it.
