University of San Diego will be playing Iowa State in the ACR D1AA final this coming weekend in Denver, but they already have a major championship trophy as they won the CRC D1 Club men's championship in the DC area last weekend.
While we all know the weather was rough at the CRC 7s, the good news for San Diego was the weather has been pretty awful in Southern California so they didn't really have to adjust. Adjusting quickly from 15s to 7s was also something they could handle as almost the entire winter/spring has been about 15s for the Toreros.
A lot of that has to do with the work of Head Coach Charlie Purdon.
"He did a fantastic job preparing for this tournament with a very limited amount of time," said USD Director of Rugby Kevin Eaton. "We won our 15s semifinal on April 15 so essentially we had two weeks of prep. We are also prepping for our 15s final against Iowa State next weekend, so a lot of work got done in a short amount of time."
Purdon got to work, and at the same time he had plenty to work with as the core of the USD team that won the Men's Red bracket at the R7CC in Atlanta last year. The team chemistry and everyone just slid into the roles they had played in 2022.
So the stage was set for the CRC tournament.