The Pacific Desert Women's D1 conference sees a crucial meeting of top teams.
Claremont Colleges, coming off an impressive shutout win over Arizona, will face one of the conference favorites in Grand Canyon.
Claremont has been impressive so far in wins over San Diego State and Arizona. The Foxes are known for their ability to ship the ball wide quickly and their skill execution, have been defensively sound, as well. That defense has been led by prop Lindsey Manugian, who was named 8x8 Sports' Player of the Month.
Yes she can carry and lead the set piece, but it's her dominant tackles that set the tone.
With Naomi Schiavoni scoring tries and Laila Hannum the captain and flyhalf who runs the show, Claremont is very dangerous.
Grand Canyon is "just" 1-0 and their win over UCSB was pretty good—wing Ciara Tuu scored three tries in that match. This is a massive early battle in this league. GCU will stay in Southern California this weekend and play UCSD on Sunday.
Waiting to see how all that pans out is Arizona State, which beat UCSB, as well, with Gabriela Rodriguez scoring three and Lily Morrison scoring two. But the 3-0 Sun Devils are idle from conference play this week.
