Wow, what an interesting weekend in Men's D2 college rugby.
First off, we had seven games where both teams were ranked. All of those games were fairly lopsided, with only one where the winner was ranked below the losing team. The average score was 41-7. So what we found was, for the most part, the highest-ranked teams are, in fact, quite strong, and they are even strong enough to win comfortably over teams that have already shown well.
The only upset was MSU Mankato vs UM-Duluth and frankly we weren't surprised Mankato won—it was a surprise that tey won by 35. Another surprise was Vermont 38-0 over UMass-Lowell. We did have a few ranked teams fairly to defeat a non-ranked team. MTSU tying Xavier isn't a big issue for MTSU because Xavier is a pretty solid small college team. Washington University losing by a point to Southern Illinois could have pulled Wash U. down but instead we've moved SIU up. Yet we made the opposite decision when Bloosmburg lost to East Stroudsburg.
Big movers are: Mankato, moving up 18 points. Again, Mankato was strong last year but it was a bit of a new thing, so we waited until they played to put them back in the Top 20 ... they're there now. Mira Costa College drops 18 spots because we haven't seen anything from them.
Memphis beat Georgia Tech and moves up eight spots after a big win over GT. Scranton drops 10 spots because they were idle and a lot of other teams played and won. Marquette drops 10 spots because they lost by a significant amount to Northern Iowa, and, again, other teams won and moved past them.
The big mover in the upper echelon is Vermont, which shut out UMass-Lowell 38-0 and move from #9 to #6.
Games to watch this coming weekend: Miami at IUP; Kent State at West Virginia; Central Michigan at Grand Valley State; UNH at Norwich.
