Some teams made a few statements this week in Men's DII College Rugby.

Men's DII Scores from the Weekend of October 9

Here's a look.

NEWCRC

Providence College's low-scoring win over Coast Guard has shaken up the New England Wide Conference a little.

Providence took down Coast Guard 12-6. Meanwhile, hard-luck Boston University finally broke through with a 54-7 defeat of Sacred Heart after two very close losses.

"Those losses were tough," said Head Coach Elie Dwek. "We had lost a bunch of players due to graduation and COVID. I think we've returned two players in our pack. So we had to work on a bunch of things."

Set piece was a big piece of the puzzle, and much-improved performances in the scrums and the lineouts set a better platform for the Terriers backline to get going.

As we reported, Norwich won big against Vermont, while UMass-Lowell got a forfeit win over Quinnipiac. Bentley's game against UNH is being rescheduled.

Norwich and Lowell are now the only undefeated teams left in the NEWCRC.

Great Midwest

We reported on Marquette's impressive win over UW-Platteville. Meanwhile, UW-Whitewater slammed UW-Milwaukee to the tune of 79-5. That wasn't the biggest win of the weekend, though, as Northern Iowa beat Illinois-Chicago 146-0. At least UIC took the field.

So Marquette is along at 3-0 in the Great Midwest North with Platteville at 2-1 and Whitewater lurking at 1-1 (remember their loss to Marquette was a razor-thin 36-31 result). In the South  Northern Iowa seems in control at 3-0 with Illinois State at 2-1. At 1-1 is Loyola, but they already lost to Illinois State who lost to UNI.

MARC

It's remains an confusing mess (in a good way) in the Mid-Atlantic, which has some small-college teams going to the small-college playoffs. But ... the teams maybe to watch out for are Georgetown (49-0 winners over Mount St. Mary's on Sunday) and Bucknell (idle this week but a decisive 2-0). The other two teams to watch are going to the small-college playoffs, and that's Loyola (Md.) and Susquehanna. Both won big this week. Next week TCNJ plays Villanova which should launch one of those teams into the conversation.

Tri-State

Marist won the clash of the top teams in the conference 22-15, but we'll likely see these two meet again in the finals. This was a well-played game and a good precursor for both. 

SCRC

Middle Tennessee State is 2-0 after a close win over Mississippi State. They play Memphis this coming weekend, which should be a good one.

Southern Conference

What happened here is that UNC-Chapel Hill won to improve to 3-1 but it was really, really close with Citadel. So the loss still establishes Citadel as a contender. Belmont Abbey won comfortably over Lander and joins Furman at 2-0 in the Southern Premier West.

Men's DII College Rankings October 4, 2021 

Allegheny

Too many forfeits. IUP remains the class of the group.

Great Lakes

Only one game of note, with Grand Valley State winning over Calvin. Report here>>

Gateway

Still too many forfeits, but Principia looked very good in beating St. Louis University. It was a very good defensive effort from the Thunder Chickens. Offensively they misfired early but managed to get two tries in before halftime. In the second half, Principia got three yellow cards and many more penalties, and yet with freshman scrumhalf Sjean Lucas and prop Alex Parrish leading the way they piled on the points to win comfortably. SLU's lone try was a penalty try.

Principia is now 2-0 in conference play, and have augmented their league schedule with two non-conference games, an intrasquad scrimmage, and three 7s weekends. It's not ideal but they are playing regularly.

MCRC

Marian won 44-7 over Xavier while Thomas More beat Western Kentucky 129-0. Matias Caramuti scored 64 points in that game thanks to six (!) tries and 17 (!!) conversions.