Utah visits Arizona State this weekend in PAC Rugby Conference play, and the Utes will hope the travel will be kinder than it was last week, when they had to call off a trip to St. Mary’s.

Certainly the intriguing but unfinished Utah squad would have wanted the stern test against the Gaels before facing the Sun Devils, but snow blocked their bus, and that was that.

Utah Coach Jon Law said missing the St. Mary’s game was disappointing, but the team took it in stride.

“We immediately scheduled an intense training run against one of the up-and-coming men’s teams here locally, Utah Brothers. That offered us up some powerful athletes to contend with and required our players to improve their body shape in tackles, rucks, and scrums.”

Law said earlier that his team’s athleticism is fairly average, but the players are smart and “dissect the game well.”

But, for now, “we’ve asked them to set making the move correctly ahead of making the correct move.”

So body technique and the proper approach over worrying about what’s the right read.

For Arizona State, the Sun Devils were stung by a loss to UCLA, and since then, said Coach Gary Lane, “we have been working on every facet of our game. They are a very committed group and are learning from their mistakes. Utah will be a big challenge for us, as the last few years they have had the better of us.”

Arizona State beat Utah fairly convincingly in 7s during the fall, but that’s not quite the same thing as 15s, and if Utah can improve their defense and avoid penalties in the breakdown, things might be different.