Chico State’s Darby McFall (PC: Jackie Finlan)
4.24 update: USA Rugby circulated its tournament info packet to teams heading to Fullerton, and TRB got the jump on publishing the semifinals match-ups here. And spoiler alert: I got the DII match-ups wrong.
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We still don’t know who’s playing who (although DI Elite individually confirmed their semifinal opponents) for the spring 15s playoffs in two weekends, so watch for USA Rugby to make an announcement (hopefully!). But if I was going to venture a guess …
(confirmed)
#1 Penn State v #4 Life
#2 Lindenwood v #3 BYU
The seeding might be off depending on whether USA Rugby is using last year’s finish (which it typically does) to determine this year’s seeds, or using this season’s results (e.g., Lindenwood’s win over Penn State in the fall) to sort teams. But even if Penn State and Lindenwood swapped due to this season’s results, then Life and BYU would likely swap too (BYU doesn’t have a super competitive build-up to playoffs, and Life lost a 22-10 game to PSU in March), and that would keep the semifinal match-ups intact.
This final four isn’t straight-forward. Chico State should be ahead of league mate UC Davis based on this season’s results, and the only mark of comparison between Central Florida and UVA is last year’s 48-20 result in UCF’s favor. So I’m guessing it’s going to be #1 Chico State vs. #4 UVA and #2 UC Davis vs. #3 Central Florida in the spring semifinals.
Tulane is making its third-straight trip to the spring semifinals, having won it all in 2016 and finished runner-up in 2017. So it should be #1. Salisbury was a late addition to the playoffs after getting its at-large bid approved in April, winning a play-in match the weekend before the Spring Round of 16, and then dominating last weekend’s opponents. That said, Salisbury will probably take the #4 seed and face Tulane.
That leaves Fresno State and Claremont, which we’d rank #2 and #3, but it doesn’t really matter. There could be a case for Claremont being ranked #4, since it competed in NSCRO last year, and Salisbury featured in the 2016 spring playoffs.
There doesn’t appear to be any preference in terms of regional pairings in the semifinals. That is, in 2016, the semifinals pit two east teams against each other and two west teams against each other; and then in 2017 it was east vs. west in the final four games.