Photo: Greg Brooks
The DI Mason Dixon conference has narrowed its title contenders to four teams, having contested quarterfinals last weekend. Three of the semifinalists are familiar post-season entities, and one is a conference newcomer looking to take one of three seeds to the DI spring regional championships.
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UVA earned a forfeit win against Temple; Virginia Tech outlasted Pittsburgh 15-7; and James Madison beat Eastern Carolina 50-5 during the conference quarterfinals. The fourth game pit Mason Dixon newcomer Kent State against North Carolina, which traveled to Ohio for the crossover match. In the team’s first game of the spring, the Golden Flashes triumphed 46-0.
Kent State coach Jeff Horton explained that the game plan against UNC was simple: Control the ball on attack and create chaos on defense.
“Through our film sessions, we were able to identify that UNC tended to attack the fringe multiple times before spreading the ball out wide,” Horton explained. “We did our best to seal the fringe and then we worked aggressively to exploit their backline with an outside-in blitz. Ideally, we were looking to stop the movement of the ball in the hands of the second receiver, and I feel as though we did a great job executing that strategy.
“On the attack, we placed extra emphasis on maintaining the integrity of our structure and sticking to our desired pattern of play,” the coach continued. “We were fortunate enough to have multiple line-breaks with various members of the tight five. These breaks allowed for quick ball to our backline and thus kept UNC on their heels for the majority of the match.”
Tighthead prop Megan Moore had a phenomenal day. She was impactful on either side of the ball and played a pivotal role with her boot, adding nine points off the tee. Alexis Barnes, who transferred from Wright State, was also influential.
“Alexis drew a lot of attention with ball in hand, which created opportunities for our supporting players on the edge, and her aggressiveness at the various phases of contact was uncanny,” Horton praised.
Holly Chesnick scored a brace of tries, while Barnes, Shannon Hustosky, Brittany Davis, Hannah Trommer and Brooke Clifford also scored. Nicole Fogwell added a conversion.”We will be spending the majority of our time cleaning up our techniques at the breakdown heading into our match against UVA,” Horton looked ahead to this weekend’s conference semifinal. “We know that our approach is going to need to be much more methodical come Saturday and controlling the pace of play is going to be our main priority. In the fall, we let Summer Harris-Jones get the best of us, and we need to ensure that doesn’t happen again.”
In the conference semifinals this Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., Kent State will play host UVA, and James Madison will play Virginia Tech. The final and third-place matches occur Sunday.
The subsequent playoff stage is the DI Elite/DI regional championships, and the Mason Dixon conference receives three berths to that April 21-23 competition. At present, the conference champion is slated to travel to Life University, while the runner-up and #3 team are scheduled for State College, Pa. That said, those seeds/match-ups will not be confirmed by USA Rugby until after March 26.
The top-four teams will advance to the DI Elite National Championship, and teams 5-8 will advance to the DI spring championship. Both occur May 5-6 at Life University.
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