NCR's DI men's postseason is a little bit confusing, but them what isn't in men's DI college rugby these days?

With two conferences fielding a combination of teams that are tracking to a CRAA- or USA Rugby-supported postseason and teams going to the NCR postseason, sometimes you're looking at splitting a conference.

And in fact, NCR is splitting conferences regardless. Here is, as far as we can tell, how it works (we also have a video about this below):

Current DIA conference Rugby East has some NCR teams in it, and those teams are tracked into NCR's DI. So this past weekend St. Bonaventure secured a 17-12 victory over Kutztown (their first ever) and finished league play 3-2. Bonnies will now probably play in the NCR DI quarterfinals. Why does the #3 team in Rugby East do this? Well, Army (5-0) and Navy (4-1 after beating Penn State) are tracking to the CRAA spring playoffs, where they are in a good position to do something interesting. We also expect Kutztown to be in the NCR postseason; the Bears were 1-4 in the Rugby East but a competitive 1-4, with two losses by less than a try.

The Liberty Conference is a former DIA conference that still looks to compete with teams at that level. However, it's not that simple. NCR is splitting them up, with some of the lower-ranked (but still strong) teams such as Binghamton or Buffalo doing into the DIAA playoffs.

The top teams—Iona, Northeast (Iona held off Northeastern in a close game to win the conference this past weekend)—go into NCR's DI bracket.

And then you've got the Chesapeake, which entered NCR as a DIAA conference, but when it became evident the top end of that conference was much stronger than the rest. So the top three will be in the NCR DI postseason in some way, with Queens likely playing the Liberty runner-up Northeaster, and Chesapeake #2 Mary Washington probably having to play in.

Meanwhile, Virginia Tech, which finished the highest of the club teams in the Chesapeake (5th at 2-4) tracks to the DIAA bracket. This is NCR's first foray into the concept of defining divisions by how a program is set up rather than the size of the school or whether their their football team is in DI. CRAA's DIA does this in a self-defining way—you commit to the schedule and you pay extra to be there. But that definition, at the moment, doesn't extend to DIAA or DII.

Three more conferences to think about in this weirdness.

The Ivy League is sending its champion to the top-level NCR playoff, and that's also interesting because with Brown upsetting Dartmouth for the title on Saturday it's not Dartmouth in that position. Dartmouth plays Navy and that's the end of their season—they opted not to play in any playoffs. Then there's the NCRC, which has half its teams committed to USA Rugby and not members of NCR, a third of its teams committed to NCR, and the remaining team (Oregon State) members of both organizations. That's why Boise State is already penciled in even though they have a game against Oregon State coming up.

And then we've got the MARC. In one sense it's pretty straightforward. The MARC #1 goes here and the MARC #2 goes there—all in the DIAA bracket. But who knows who that will be?

Right now West Chester leads with a 5-1 record and one more bonus point than 5-1 Rowan and 5-1 St. Joseph's. Salisbury, by virtue of losing to St. Joe's has dropped to 4-2. But it's still crazy-tight, At least we're arguing about results on the field.

Best NCR DI Teams:
St. Bonaventure, Iona, Northeastern, Queens, Mary Washington, Brown, Kutztown (yeah, yeah, we know, 1-4, so what).

Best NCR DIAA Teams:
Boise State, West Chester, Binghamton, Rowan, West Virginia (maybe), St. Joe's.