The USA Rugby DI & DII College Fall Championships begin with regional playoffs (Nov. 23-24), and they are preceded by a wild card round on Nov. 16. The women’s colleges will head to either Poughkeepsie, N.Y., or Columbia, Mo., for the Nov. 23-24 regional playoffs, and then the teams that emerge 2-0 on the weekend will advance to the championships on Dec. 7-8 in Matthews, N.C.
RELATED: 2018 Fall College Championship Brackets
The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic pools will head to New York (click here for the Poughkeepsie Tournament Information Packet), and the West and Midwest pools will head to Missouri (click here for the Columbia Tournament Information Packet).
TRB has seen a draft of DI and DII playoff brackets, as they were submitted to USA Rugby in May 2019, but will refrain from publishing as the organizing body is the final word. It’s a head-scratcher as to why this crucial information is consistently circulated so late in the season, especially considering the regular turnover of collegiate leadership and their unfamiliarity with the post-season and notably the wild card opportunities.
The field needs to know: (1) how many seeds each conference receives to the regional playoffs so 2nd-place teams (or 3rd- and 4th-place teams depending on the size of the league) know whether they have to compete in the wild card round or not; and (2) potential wild card locations. The latter scenario is the one that often sees teams forgo an opportunity at the post-season. Wrangling a last-minute away trip is not easy to organize, and securing field space at home can even be a hassle – but it eases with advance notice.
Again, brackets were proposed months ago, so even if there had to be edits since then, an advance look would arm teams with the knowledge that an additional fixture at a distant location was a possibility.
NOV 16: Wild Card Round @ higher seed
Division II held 11 wild card games last year, so it’s a vital phase of the playoffs, especially in the more densely populated Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. In Division I, the western portion of the competition didn’t hold any wild card games last year, but the eastern did to account for independent teams and conferences’ runners-up. It’ll be interesting to see which independent team receives the automatic berth to the quarterfinals. Davenport is the 2018 runner-up but the U.S. Naval Academy beat the Panthers, handily, in season.
NOV 23-24: Regional Championships @ 2 locations
Division II will start with 16 teams and produce four semifinalists, and Division I will start with eight and produce two finalists that advance.
DEC 7-8: Fall Final @ Matthews, N.C.
DII will be active that Saturday with semifinals, and then all of the finals will be contested on Sunday. DII will also have a 3rd place game, and men’s competitions will also be present.
At present, the DII brackets pit teams from different regional playoff locations against each other; i.e., Northeast will face the Midwest in the semifinals, and the West will play the Mid-Atlantic.