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Men's Top 20: Is it Cal, BYU and the Rest...

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Men's Top 20: Is it Cal, BYU and the Rest?
by Alex Goff

March 15, 2006 – It seems that Cal and BYU are stretching their legs and leaving the rest of the pack behind. While Cal had an easy time of it against Stanford, we will see again how they deal with top-level teams in this weekend's Cal Invitational.

Meanwhile, BYU continues to cut a swath through ranked opposition at the end of the winter. Cal Poly, Penn State, Colorado, Utah, and now Texas A&M have felt the sting of the Cougar claws. Suddenly Cal Poly's 30-10 loss doesn't look so bad as BYU beat those five Top 20 teams by an average of 45 to 6. Featuring a team that takes full advantage of the Mormon church's reach throughout the Pacific, they are most formidable.

Further down it was a big result for Clemson, previously unranked, to beat Tennessee, previously unbeaten, 35-20. Tennessee drops a few spots while Clemson climbs into the Top 20 for the first time in a long while. They stay tied at #20 (we couldn't bring ourselves to move anyone out just yet), and whether they stay hangs largely on their Purdue game this week.

Moving up? Well Buffalo did itself a favor winning the first of its games in Ireland, and beating a college from a traditional rugby nation usually helps you. Also moving up a little is UC Davis. They followed up their tie with St. Mary's with a 24-6 win over UN-Reno ins the snow and wind. It wasn't pretty and coach Steve Gray briefly considered fitting his team with snow goggles, but they held on in the face of a dogged Reno effort. Negranti, Reynolds, Rozelle, and Kelly scored for Davis as the Aggies remain tied in the standings with St. Mary's.

St. Mary's, for their part, hosted the Pat Vincent Cup and also celebrated their 50th anniversary. The result wasn't a fairy tale ending, as UCSB ended up 2-0 on the weekend, and deservedly so as they demonstrated athleticism and rugby ability and saw their stock, if not their rankings, rise ever so slightly. This UCSB/Cal Poly duo is the best two teams to come out of SoCal in at least two years, and probably longer.

Meanwhile we watch those on the cusp. Central Washington looked quite good losing to St. Mary's, but hanging close until late, and then fighting off Chico State.

"We learned a great deal in that loss, probably more than if we'd won it," said CWU coach Bob Ford. "We are putting something together here and continuing to develop a program. We take our rugby seriously."

And they have some fight, as they looked like losing to Chico until they rallied late. Watch out for them.

Is it time, then, to consider national playoff implications? Let us consider: Cal is a lock for the Pacific Coast #1, and they will face the SoCal #2, which should be UCSB. What a match that will be. To be honest, Santa Barbara have a real, if slim, chance of knocking off the Bears in this first round match. It'll be fun to watch, that's for sure.

Barring an upset to a pretty good North Carolina team, Clemson should sew up the South #1 seed, and that pits them against the MARFU #2, which we think is Navy at this point. Navy wins that, leaving (probably) Cal v. Navy as a quarterfinal. Another smasher.

Army is the Northeast #1 and they face the West winner, and we still don't know who that will be. Our money is on Wyoming. That will be a really interesting game, and Army will likely win it, we think. South #2 Tennessee will take on the Pacific Coast #3 which in all likelihood will be Utah. And Utah should win that.

MARFU #1 Penn State would then take on Pacific Coast #4, which we think is Washington State, but could be St. Mary's, UC Davis, or somebody else. We say WSU and we say WSU could upset a team we had as the national #2 not that long ago. And then Dartmouth plays Ohio State in a game that most of the time you'd pick Ohio State. So we will, with reservations because Dartmouth ain't bad at all.

And finally SoCal #1 Cal Poly to battle Purdue. Mustangs win that one. And West #2 (Colorado? Oklahoma?) take on BYU, and it doesn't look like too many teams are going to come close to BYU. Still, we know Cal Poly wants another piece of them.

That's our take. We think maybe the high ranked team wins every time except perhaps WSU v. PSU and maybe one more.

But right now it looks less like 1,2,3,4 ... than Cal (1), BYU (2) ..... and then a long wait for #3.