Round two of the Varsity Cup and in one half of the bracket we’ve got BYU at UCLA.

The Cougars are on a nice role that has seen them defeat their toughest competition (St. Mary’s twice, Utah, Cal Poly) and then cruise through a couple of three-digit wins in-state.

But now it’s time for business.

“Every practice, every win has been focused on winning the Varsity Cup,” BYU captain and All-American Kyle Sumsion told BYURugby.com. “Consistency has been key in our success.”

Consistent they have been, mixing an unrelenting pattern of play with the ability to turn turnovers into long-range tries. UCLA hosts them, and has the potential to cause the Cougars some problems.

The Bruins at their best have pushed Cal and were very good in defeating a dynamic Air Force team 32-12. UCLA moves the ball very well, and defends with a lot of patience, at their best. Head Coach Scott Stewart acknowledges, though, that they’ve been inconsistent. 

“It’s been inconsistency of performance, but also of personnel,” said the former Canada international. “We have a lot of young players, but we felt good about our performance on Saturday. We were able to convert opportunities in the second half, and once we cleaned up our offside penalties we were in good shape.”

Once they started to get back on defense quicker, the Bruins punished Air Force. They know BYU will be a tougher proposition.

“We have got to play extremely efficiently when we have the ball,” said Stewart. “We have to keep a cool head, and we need to be as tough as we can be when we don’t have the ball. We’re mentally ready, and the guys know there’s no room for mistakes.”

Meanwhile, Central Washington hosts Utah in the other quarterfinal on this side of the bracket. 

The last time we played Utah, it went down to the wire and was a very competitive match," CWU Head Coach Tony Pacheco told CWURugby.com.  "Utah is a very good team and we expect the same competition level as last year.  If we execute our game plan well, we will put ourselves in position to move on."

Except this is a different year. Central is stronger and more powerful 1 through 15 than they were in 2014 when they edged Utah 26-24. Utah is still rebuilding. The Utes have grown and developed, but you know they would have loved to have played a game last week (Oklahoma’s sanction prevented them from playing the game). 

Our Take

Both UCLA are capable of producing exceptional and exciting moments of rugby, but it is the relentless power of a varsity (CWU) and almost-varsity (BYU) program that will make winning very difficult. Certainly if errors creep into the game for either the Wildcats or the Cougars, the Utes and the Bruins have the skill and pace to punish those errors for tries. But it doesn’t look like we’ll see a lot of errors. Our picks are BYU and Central Washington.