In a battle of teams that really don’t know each other, you never know what you’re going to get.

In the second of two Men’s DII College playoff brackets in Pittsburgh, SUNY Oswego plays Rhode Island, while Wisconsin-Whitewater takes on Springfield.

In the first matchup, Oswego (ranked #19 by Goff Rugby Report) plays Rhode Island, ranked #20. Clearly GRR thinks it’s going to be close. URI had to battle until the final weekend to win the NECRC - a nerve-wracking little journey that had them ruing an early-season loss to Vermont that put things in doubt. But apart from that game, URI has not lose, and in the NECRC that means something.

Oswego, meanwhile, rebounded from an early loss themselves, losing a close one to Cortland during the season, and winning over Cortland in the Upstate NY final.

“I couldn't be prouder of these boys,” said Oswego Coach Jim Clark. “We absolutely dominated possession and field position and our pack out-muscled Cortland and pushed them all over the field. We pretty much owned the match from start to finish. Never underestimate the pride that comes with being the reigning conference champions.”

On the other side, Springfield hasn’t gotten a lot of love in the GRR rankings, and that’s partly due to their quiet nature (we’ll call it that - they don’t call us back, so what can we do?). Coming out of the New England Wide Conference, Springfield has one really close game, and looked comfortable the rest of the way, and then defeated a strong Salve Regina team 14-11 in the play-in.

But this is a different deal now. Whitewater is very, very good. They have all kinds of size and power. And while most teams have won their conferences with two or three really tough opponents, the Warhawks have had to wade through five really solid rugby teams. As shown by the results in the play-ins, GRR’s rankings for the WIIL are a fairly accurate reflection of how strong this league is, and even so, Whitewater went 9-0 (including playoffs) and allowed only 72 points, almost half of which were in the semis and final combined. 

And it’s easy to just chalk it up to size and strength up front, but Whitewater can spin it, and Alec Truethardt, Eric Packowitz and others running rampant. They have depth-in-pace that most teams don’t have.