College Men
We're down to four teams in Men's D2 college rugby as Sunday saw the NCR D2 quarterfinals.
GRR's #1-ranked IUP won their closest game of the year, edging a tenacious UNC-Wilmington 29-24 to advance to the semifinals in Houston in three weeks.
NCR Men D1 and D1AA Scores and Notes:
NCR D1Brown 23 Walsh 15
Wheeling 58 Notre Dame 24
Queens 37 AIC 19
St. Bonaventure 30- Thomas More 24
This sets up the semifinals in two weeks:
Wheeling vs Queens
St. Bonaventure vs Brown
The GRR NCR D1 Rankings have Queens at #1, Wheeling at #3, St. Bonaventure at #4, and Brown at #2.
Expectations were largely met in the NCR Men’s D2 college playoffs.
A ThrillerPerhaps the most exciting Round of 16 game was Georgetown vs RPI. The Hoyas edged the Engineers 21-20 in a wild one.
Friday and Sunday produces our first two rounds of the NCR Men’s D2 playoffs and we do have some big question-mark games on the slate.
Defending champs IUP are back with what is largely the same lineup that won it all last year. Last year’s runners-up Memphis are back and they have a very talented side in which the biggest question is, have they been challenged.
A number of the games that decided playoff spots or seeds in NCR’s D1AA playoffs were very close, indicating, perhaps, that we might see much the same this weekend.
Consider Bowling Green’s comeback, one-point win over Louisville that put BGSU in the final eight and left the 2023 NCR runners-up watching from home.