In the Wisconsin-Iowa-Illinois League (WII), Wisconsin-Whitewater is, not unexpectedly, in the final, after beating Northern Iowa 88-12 in a physical game. Illinois State also won, putting a 58-19 decision over a very good Wisconsin-Milwaukee team. Those two teams will battle it out for the conference title Sunday. But UNI and UW-M are not out of national playoff contention. WIIL gets three seeds to nationals, so the 3rd-place game has huge implications.

Also with huge implications was the Salve Regina v Plymouth State, Plymouth State was 2-2 in conference play, while Salve was 4-0. But in the 1st v 2nd playoff, Plymouth State upset Salve Regina 28-22 to win the conference.

Bentley remained alive in the Rugby Northeast after beating Providence College 34-8. It was a huge win, providing Providence College with their first loss of the season, but it also clinched 1st in the Rugby Northeast for Bentley. Southern Connecticut beat Saint Michael's 55-8 to join Bentley and Providence College at 7-1. The tiebreaker for what looks to be three 7-1 teams is points difference among the tied teams. Bentley has a points difference of +17 in their two games against Providence and SoConn. Providence has a PD of -10, and SoConn -7. So SoConn gets 2nd, and a chance to play the champion of Upstate NY.

(Addendum and Correction: The tiebreaker for RNE serves to first find a winner. So with the three-way tie, the points difference among the three is used only to find the conference winner ... in this case Bentley. Once Bentley is declared the winner and is out of the equation, we look at the other two teams, and we go back to the original and preferred tiebreaker, which is head-to-head. So in this game, Providence beat SoConn 29-13 on September 16, and that's why Providence takes 2nd, not SoConn. So we were wrong, SoConn is not the second playoff team, it's Providence College.)  

(Additional addendum: After an appeal from Southern Connecticut, USA Rugby has ruled that the Rugby Northeast rules say that the 3rd-level tiebreaker "eliminates" a team, which was taken to mean that a team is declared 3rd, or eliminated from contention. So with that understanding, they went back to what we originally said - SoConn is 2nd, and Providence College 3rd. However, Providence College is expected to appeal.)

It's all weird in the Cardinals Conference. First of all, the teams ranked 4-6 had to play two games on Saturday. Old Dominion and Northern Virginia Griffins won their early games, and faced off with NC State and VMI later in the day. It's tough enough to play two games in a weekend when the other team plays just one, but two games in a day? You'd expect ODU and the Griffins to wilt. They did not. The Griffins shocked VMI 30-28, while ODU was tied with NC State at halftime 26-26. The Wolfpack pulled away, but it was a scare for NC State.

NC State plays the Griffins for the conference title Sunday. The Griffins are a U23 team, not a college team, and so not eligible for the national playoffs. As a result, NC State will be the Cardinals Conference #1 in the national playoffs. Old Dominion and VMI play for the 2nd seed to nationals.