NCR D1 Sees Clash of Familiar and Unfamiliar
NCR D1 Sees Clash of Familiar and Unfamiliar
We will potentially have a new face in the NCR D1 final if Wheeling wins their semifinal this coming weekend, but every other team in the final four—St. Bonaventure, Brown, and Queens—have been in the championship game before.
Brown vs St. Bonaventure
Two former champions (2021 for Bonnies and 2022 for Brown) face off after each had a tough quarterfinal. Brown got by Walsh 23-15 and St. Bonaventure defeated Thomas More 30-24.
It’s been two very different seasons for these teams. Bonnies has played a tough Rugby East season that included five games decided by eight points or fewer. Bonnies was 3-2 in those games, but it’s those difficult games that, normally, help forge a championship team.
But even so, the quarterfinal with Thomas More was a different environment.
“Our game against Thomas More was a good lesson in not taking our foot off the gas,” said St. Bonaventure Head Coach Danny Neighbour. “Not to take anything from what Thomas More did but I felt we were the dominant team against a physical Thomas More side, especially in the first half. We were in good control after that first half and we let them back in it with some undisciplined play, lazy effort, and 12 points in conversions missed after scoring 6 tries.”
The SBU kicking game is usually dependable, so going 0-for-6 is a rarity.
Going forward, Neighbour feels good about his team’s chances.
“I think we match up well with Brown,” Neighbour told GRR. “We’ve played them two times now in semifinals and it’s always been a close, competitive game. I see it being no different. Brown have talented players and are well coached, but for us, it’s no different than week in week out playing in Rugby East. Every week is a big challenge with a high level of competition. I think that prepares us well for the post season each year.”
Brown has been in a Liberty Conference that they won by a wide margin. We at GRR don’t like to use the word “dominated” but if its appropriate for any team it is appropriate for a Brown team that outscored conference opponents 67-9.
Prepping for this game with the Thanksgiving break in the middle has been a task.
“Since we have a good number of students that live far away, trying to accomplish anything during Thanksgiving week is always a challenge,” said Head Coach David LaFlamme. “Rather than worry about it, we view it as a good rest for the boy and focus on our prep heading into this week.”
They are coming off perhaps their toughest game (save October 12 vs AIC) of the season against Walsh.
“That was a tough game,” LaFlamme told GRR. “We knew we'd have to be on-point in all our areas. We saw some opportunity at set piece time so focused on how we might be able to disrupt their game there—I feel we did well in that area. We have been doing a ton of fitness work to prepare for this point in the season and because of this, we felt our recovery time in the last quarter of the games would be less than a team less prepared.”
Fitness, said LaFlamme, had a direct impact on his team’s performance in the finals 20 minutes. Walsh, of course, got into penalty trouble, which has been an issue for team, but Walsh also made Brown work for it in the red zone.
“I felt there were 2-3 occasions we should have come away with points but could not convert those opportunities,” LaFlamme said.
So these two familiar opponents face off once more.
“It’s a tough challenge this week with Bonnies,” said LaFlamme. “Those games are tight. Two years ago, to me, that was the National championship game. Bonnies missed some critical opportunities in that one. We held onto the football and came out with the win. I was confident heading into the Queens match that we'd have a strong chance of pushing though and we did. Last year, we lost that game on the last play.”
Unfortunately I have not been able to get an understanding from those that decided it as to why. One of the great mysteries of my coaching career. All I know is we were not in Houston and Bonnies were. Would we have beat NDC? Who knows.
Fast forward 12 months and here we are again. Danny Neighbor and I spent 3 weeks together in France last June so it will be good to see him again. At the end of the day, my hope is that he's less happy to see me ;)
Bonnies has had to deal with several lineup changes over the last several weeks. Neighbour said he is impressed with how his team has handled that.
“Our depth has really helped us in a tough season of injuries and the lads have answered with no drop in standards,” said the SBU Coach. “Finally getting a bye with a week off for Thanksgiving is exactly what the doctor ordered. We’ve not had a weekend off since October 12th. Guys have slowly been coming back from injury and we are back to full strength going in to this prep week. Snow is flying and it’s postseason rugby. Nothing that we are not used to in the Allegheny Mountains.”
“Danny Neighbor and I spent three weeks together in France last June so it will be good to see him again,” concluded LaFlamme, adding with tongue in cheek: “At the end of the day, my hope is that he's less happy to see me.”
Brown vs St. Bonaventure. Kickoff 1PM ET. Live on The Rugby Network>>
Queens vs Wheeling
Queens made the final in 2022, losing to Brown in a bizarre, card-filled championship game. But, unlike the other semifinal, they aren't especially familiar with this year's final four opponent, Wheeling.
This season, the Royals have been ranked #1 or #2 by GRR for much of the season, and that’s because they have been performing well throughout the Rugby East season. What Head Coach Frank McKinney said during the season was that his team should not look past any opponent to focus on a later game. He was talking about looking past Southern Virginia and Penn State to focus on Life University, and wouldn’t you know it, they lost to Penn State but then beat Life 29-26 in Charlotte.
So McKinney wants his team to be dialed-in on the task at hand. Let’s not worry about the final, because we’ve got a semifinal to play.
“Wheeling is a scary team,” McKinney told GRR. “They sure score a lot of points and they are fantastic in open play. Against Notre Dame they scored twice off kickoffs and they look for unstructured parts of the game, they look for kicks. As a result you’ve got to have a really good kick-chase and that was not a strength for us this year.”
Queens has trained for opponents that play a highly-structured game—that’s the Rugby East.
“This will be more run-and-gun,” he said. “We need to make it a more structured, 15s game.”
While Queens losing to Navy at the end of the Rugby East season wasn’t, they felt, their best outing, that win over Life was a big step for them. The quarterfinal win vs AIC was a game in which mcKinney would have liked to have seen his Royals pull away. But they didn’t.
“A lot of dumb penalties,” said McKinney. “And they took advantage. I see a lot of AIC in Wheeling. Fast guys, big forwards looking to mash you.”
The Thanksgiving break was a slightly different one for the Queens players as McKinney brought them back for sessions on Saturday and Sunday. They then took Monday off and then worked their way toward the semis in Pennsylvania. The student-athletes who couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving went with a teammate. Everybody took someone home with him. It was, in the end, a smart team-building and preparation plan that didn’t run his players into the ground later in this week.
And then there’s Wheeling. Looking to be the first Big Rivers team in the final, Wheeling has been winning games with big scores. Yes they lost the Big Rivers final 44-41 to Thomas More, but their 58-24 win over Notre Dame was impressive.
“Notre Dame is a good team, disciplined and tough,” said Wheeling Head Coach Mike Geibel. “We got some quick scored to start the second half and that really broke it open for us.”
Queens should be a different proposition.
“I think we just need to make a little better decisions early in the match,” said Geibel. “We need to a little more attention to detail to finish opportunities and not give anything away easier than it should be.”
Making Queens earn their ground is important—so while Wheeling is a good breakaway team that can score from deep in their own half, that doesn’t mean they want the opposition to do the game. Geibel said the problem there is penalties and thinking you can always just score again.
“In the Big Rivers final I think we got a little complacent,” said Geibel. “We jumped out to an early lead just like the Davenport match.”
That Davenport match on September 21 ended with Davenport winning 43-42.
“And in the same way we gave up some penalties and let off the pressure a bit, maybe thinking we had the match well in hand,” Geibel told GRR. “Then, when it got close, we got a little panicked and some guys tried to force something to happen instead of trusting our system and skill to get it done. It’s something we’ve worked on a lot since, and hopefully it won’t be an issue going forward.”
Queens vs Wheeling. Kickoff 5PM ET. Live on The Rugby Network>>
