The tiny yet massive Mid-South kicks off this weekend as Goff Rugby Report #5 Lindenwood faces #4 Life University in Marietta, Ga.

Life is coming off a series of big blowouts of good programs such as South Carolina, Clemson, and Air Force. But the Running Eagles coaching staff will likely be more interested in how the team handled a much closer clash with Navy.

Cards both yellow and red, and a bunch of turnovers won’t make them happy, and certainly ball security and discipline will have been part of the curriculum these past two weeks.

But, added Life Head Coach Scott Lawrence, “Navy really put pressure on us at the set piece which made it difficult to get going forward. It was exactly the kind of physical contest we needed at this point of the year."

Meanwhile, Lindenwood has been looking for the same sort of physical challenges. 

The Lions’ toughest test was back on January 23, a 24-13 loss to St. Mary’s. Since then, they’ve played Santa Clara, Arizona, and Florida State, logging an average score of 80-8 (exactly - no decimals). 

“We’ve done as good a prep as we can to build up to conference play,” said Lindenwood Head Coach JD Stephenson, who said he wanted to get better game experience for his squad before conference play. “We got to get outside and play St. Mary’s and some other quality programs. Last year, we started conference play coming off the LVI, so we’d been playing 7s the week before. What we’ve been doing now has put us in a much better position.”

It’s not clear whether either coach has settled on his best 23 game day roster. Certainly Lawrence has a group of young players to nurse through the season, and Stephenson is still ovine some players around.

“The key is,” said the Lindenwood coach, “as players are tested on a weekly basis, we create death and the cream will rise to the top.”

Winning is important to these teams, of course, but the odd thing about the DIA and Mid-South is that the DIA playoffs are decided by the D1ARugby rankings, which are voted on by coaches and members of the media (including GRR’s Alex Goff). In those rankings, Life is #2 and Lindenwood #3. Competitive losses won’t change those rankings much.

The game, which is sled to kick off at 1pm Eastern Time on Saturday, Feb. 20. The link is here: http://portal.stretchinternet.com/life/