D2 Semifinals: Who Had the Toughest Road?
D2 Semifinals: Who Had the Toughest Road?
Goff Rugby Report's recent obsession has been whether iron actually sharpens iron or not.
For the most part we at GRR World Headquarters believe it does—teams that have to struggle and that have to work their way through difficult conferences are better prepared for playoff rugby than those who have an easy time of it. There are exceptions, of course, but generally the adage holds.
Except there is an addendum to all of that. If your team has been through repeated playoff scenarios, then the regular season doesn't have to be the testing ground in the same way. A group of players who have been all the way through might well retain that understanding of what it takes.
So that brings us to the Men's D2 NCR Championship. In this final four, there are two teams that have had to battle almost non-stop to get here. That would be Norwich and Towson. Another has had a relatively smooth road, but got one crucial test and has that playoff experience. And the fourth definitely has that playoff experience. Those two would be Northern Iowa and IUP.
Semifinal #1 Towson vs Northern Iowa
On October 12 Towson lost 22-15 to Salisbury. That dropped the Tigers to 2-2 in their conference and even though the Mid-Atlantic put eight teams into their conference playoffs, with one of those spots taken up by the Cardinals Conference top D2 team, there actually were only seven spots. And Towson was in real danger of missing out. As it turned out, being within seven points of the Sharks was enough, as that bonus point bumped Towson past East Stroudsburg for the 8th seed in the playoffs.
But, with a week to prepare and some significant soul-searching, Towson arrived in the playoffs a different team.
They beat #1 seed Scranton, then got revenge over Salisbury, before taking down Villanova in the conference final. They followed that up with wins over Loyola of Chicago and Grand Valley State of Michigan. Since that loss to Salisbury the Tigers have gone 5-0 against well-ranked playoff teams, unveiling a previously moribund offense—25 points per game in the regular season, but since the MARC playoffs began it's over 38 per game. Towson has had nothing to lose since their first playoff win against Scranton.
Northern Iowa, for their part, went through what has historically been a very competitive Great Midwest Conference hardly being touched—78-17, 95-14, 38-12 (Marquette), and 99-12. In the playoffs it wasn't much different ... until the NCR quarterfinals, when UNI needed OT to beat a very powerful Montana State. Complacency? Head Coach Zeus Ramirez said it might have been. That result, he said, came at exactly the right time. His team needed to be reminded that resilience is how you win a champioinships.
Semifinal #2 IUP vs Norwich
Norwich plays in what is probably the toughest D2 league right now. The NACR didn't have too many easy games, and Norwich found that out—they didn't even win their conference regular season, Vermont did. But that loss to UVM was just what the Cadets needed and in the conference final, behind 16 points from Kris Wayton and a game-icing try from Marius Edwards, they held on 41-38.
After that Norwich shut out Villanova and beat Georgetown 37-12 to make this semifinal.
Head Coach Bob Weggler pointed to three factors that put the Cadets where they are now: Team Development—players new to their positions needed time to figure out exactly what they needed to do; Grit—their tackling and physicality in the tackle has improved significantly; and Set Piece—the Norwich scrum and lineout are now much, much better than they were in the mid-season loss to Vermont.
Weggler said it's no surprise—any team should be better now than in September, but still that requires the buy-in from the players.
IUP, meanwhile, are already bought in. This is a veteran team, and while their conference opposition was, shall we say, not as strong as NACR's, the Crimson Hawks have all been there before. Head Coach Seth Erwin hasn't needed to lecture his players that it gets tougher, because they knew that. Even so, their game with UNC-Wilmington was probably a bit of a wakeup call. UNCW did an excellent job in taking away time and space when IUP had the ball, but the Crimson Hawks stayed calm because of the veteran leadership such as RJ Beach, Trent Stalling, Dylan McAnulty, and Dom Holmes.
A fully healthy and stocked IUP team is a formidable opponent, but the thing is they do indeed need those veteran players to keep the younger players on an even keel.
So Who Wins?
This is actually a very tight group. It's hard to bet against Towson, but this appears to be UNI's year. It's hard to bet against Norwich, but IUP is still a massively talented team. If Norwich can dominate set piece and play defense the way they did the last two rounds, the Hawks might have difficulty. If Towson keeps on fighting, Northern Iowa will have to dig deep.
Towson vs Northern Iowa 4PM CT, Houston, Texas.
Norwich vs IUP 6PM CT, Houston, Texas.
Both games are on The Rugby Network in their TRN+ Ticket (paywalled-$12.99 for the entire playoff weekend) feed here>>
