Milestones For California Conference Teams
Milestones For California Conference Teams
Despite not really getting close to winning their conference, some California D1A teams reached important milestones this season.
Cal State Long Beach, after starting the season 0-3 (playing against the top three teams in the conference), have gone 4-0 and guaranteed themselves a .500 conference record. If they beat San Diego State next week, they will be 5-3. For their part, SDSU also started rough, going 0-4 before beating Sac State, Santa Clara, and UCSC to go to 3-4. If the Aztecs beat CSULB next week both teams will be .500 after 0-3 starts.
And speaking of Sac State, they had never won a game in D1A until this year, when they beat Santa Clara on January 25. This past weekend the Hornets beat UC Davis 37-14 to win their second game in D1A.
This was a huge step for the program. Inside center Gavin Smith scored three tries for the Hornets. The Mother Lode product spent a year in Germany, playing rugby, and he has come back much improved.
This was the first time in 18 years that Sac State had beaten UC Davis.
For the Hornets, this is a nice confidence boost for a team that graduates only four seniors, two of whom are looking to pursue graduate studies at the school, so they might return.
With one game left here are the California D1A standings:
| California D1A | W | L | T | PA | PA | PD | BT | BL | Pts |
| Saint Mary's | 8 | 0 | 0 | 698 | 81 | 617 | 8 | 0 | 40 |
| Cal Poly | 7 | 1 | 0 | 638 | 85 | 553 | 8 | 1 | 37 |
| UCSB | 6 | 2 | 0 | 294 | 230 | 64 | 6 | 0 | 30 |
| CSULB | 4 | 3 | 0 | 271 | 253 | 18 | 4 | 0 | 20 |
| San Diego State | 3 | 4 | 0 | 147 | 355 | -208 | 3 | 1 | 16 |
| Sacramento State | 2 | 6 | 0 | 160 | 340 | -180 | 4 | 1 | 13 |
| UC Santa Cruz | 2 | 6 | 0 | 161 | 396 | -235 | 4 | 1 | 13 |
| Santa Clara | 2 | 6 | 0 | 134 | 493 | -359 | 2 | 0 | 10 |
| UC Davis | 1 | 7 | 0 | 124 | 394 | -270 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
It's worth noting that while this conference is considered somewhat low on the competitiveness scale—Saint Mary's won it with an average score of 87-4—outside of the top two teams there is much more parity. Games between #teams #3 through #9 included 20% close-loss bonus points, which is a solid number. The average score among those seven teams was 40-18, which is quite good, and if you take out UCSB games it's even closer.
