All of NCR's women's college divisions are coming to their culmination this weekend in Houston—here's who is playing and why.
Small College
We go into some more detail about this division here: Wild Semifinal Matchups in Women's Small College
But we're saying this is weird because Endicott and St. Bonaventure pretty clearly have the top resumés in the competition. Maybe it will work out that either SUNY Cortland or UW-Platteville are stronger than the other two. Platteville has won big in pretty much every game thay have played and their semifinal win over Wayne State was very impressive. Cortland had to work for it a bit more in the semis, and, remember, has already lost to St. Bonaventure.
Endicott has been even more dominant than last year when they won the small college championship. So, yeah, there is a bit of a question as to why the brackets fell the way they did.
DII
Defending champions Wisconsin Eau-Claire is back and, if anything, looked better than last year. However, they just barely got past Cincinnati in the quarterfinals. Most of the starting 15 played with the championship team of last year, and their defense, which has held opponents to only 31 points in seven games. However, tellingly, 24 of those points came in the playoffs.
The quarterfinal was an interesting one. Eau-Claire seemed like the person you work with who only gets going when there's a deadline looming, as they scored at the end of each half. A brilliant offload from wing Izzy Currie to fullback Carys Ridd put the #15 around the edge and in under the posts. Currie made the crucial conversion. And then, with time well up on the game and Cincinnati winning 10-7, a series of Bearcat penalties allowed Eau-Claire to get into scoring position. The forwards surged closer, drew the attention of pretty much all of the Cincinnati defenders, and then the ball went swiftly out to wing Maggie Behnke, who took the angle for the game-winner. Dramatic stuff!
They now play Illinois, which tied Loyola in their opener before running through everyone else. Their Round of 16 win over Bowling Green was the closest game they played after the tie, 25-17. Weird that two Great Waters Conference teams meet in this semi; two teams that have already played each other, in fact. Eau-Claire won that game 43-5.
In the other semi, Vassar, which has won the old ACRA championship the last two years and this year was part of the movement of that competition into NCR. Vassar isn't as dominant this year compered to the last two, having lost to Columbia twice and inching past Coastal Carolina in their Round of 16 game 17-15. But they have a unique commitment to continuity that many teams cannot break.
Last year GRR concluded that there was little difference between Eau Claire and Vassar as they won their respective playoffs. This year, we get to see how they match up directly.
"We have a rookie back division," warned Head Coach Tony Brown. "Our #9 is a sophomore; our #10 is a converted wing; 12, 13, 11 are all first-year students, and 14 and 15 are sophomores."
So big surprise, they have had to mature rugby-wise, learning patience and ruthlessness.
"We have struggled to take a few clear cut opportunities and had we done so we would be 9-1," said Brown, referring to their opening-week loss to D1 Elite team Penn State.
Still, with Sophia Bailey and Zoe Lynch they can score points.
The Brewers take on a Coast Guard team that beat Columbia and Roger Williams to make the semis. Coast Guard's defense is very strong, logging shutouts in five of their six conference games. But come playoff time, they did find they were giving up points—17 in the NEWCRC final; 17 in the Round of 16; 25 in the quarterfinals. The good news is they learned those lessons and still won, and offensively they topped 40 points each time with scrumhalf Railey Westervelt running the tempo nicely.
So in every team we have a bit of "yeah, but" aspect. And while the matchups themselves should have been switched, it's also reasonable that Coast Guard and Vassar are probably the 2nd and 3rd seed of this group, and that game will be potentially quite close.
