St. Mary's remains atop the California DIA Conference thanks to a 53-12 defeat of UC Santa Barbara; Cal Poly won their first conference game in other action this weekend.

St. Mary's rested several starters due to injuries, but held in in, what Head Coach Tim O'Brien called a "very low-energy match."

Cal Poly, meanwhile, has to be happy with a 26-13 victory over Santa Clara. The Mustangs are the last California Conference team to play a conference match, and they have aspirations of making the DIA playoffs. But to do that, Cal Poly probably needs to finish at least 2nd in the conference (it would be shocking if St. Mary's didn't win it), and Santa Clara was certainly an impediment to that goal.

"It was a big game for us," said Cal Poly Coach James Tesoriero. "We basically needed to win, and we've been a bit out of form so we were looking for a result and to get off to a winning start. We didn't know a lot about Santa Clara, but we showed them respect and knew they'd be handy, and they were."

Santa Clara tried to expose Cal Poly out wide, while Cal Poly tried to punish Santa Clara in tight, and that was essentially the story of the game. Eventually Cal Poly's superirority in the scrums finished the story.

No. 8 Dustin Mollard had been out injured for the past four months, but returned to the field Saturday, and was inspirational, getting his team go-forward and scoring two tries.

"He was rusty, but he was also our most threatening attacking play," said Tesoriero. Hooker Eddie McFarland was also excellent, showing a solid work rate around the field and executing in the scrums and lineouts.

Cal Poly may have been through the wringer in some of their warmup games, but the result is a team that is match fit and ready to play. Now Tesoriero just wants to clean up some things, notably team discipline - the game was unnecessarily chippy and the Mustangs suffered two yellow cards as the result of some pushing and shoving. 

"We lost the penalty count and had those cards," said Tesoriero. "Our discipline needs to be a lot better."