Nov 22, 2024
St. Bonaventure has one goal in its National Collegiate Rugby Championship quarterfinal match — to make More less.
The Bonnies (5-3), ranked No. 4 in the latest NCR Division I poll, travel to Crestview Hills, Kentucky, to meet Big Rivers Conference champion Thomas More University (6-2) at noon Saturday. The game will be livestreamed.
SBU upended Dartmouth, 41-17, last Saturday in a playoff game they trailed 10-0 for much of the first half. Coach Danny Neighbour knows his club can’t afford to start slowly again if they hope to advance to the national semifinals Dec. 7 at Penn State-Berks for the fourth straight year.
SBU defeated Penn State for the national title in 2021 and lost in the title game to Notre Dame College in 2023.
“We’re a young side and maybe they felt some nerves (last week), knowing that if you lose, you go home, and sometimes that can snowball into making more errors,” Neighbour said. “But I was really proud of the guys for figuring out what we were doing wrong toward the end of the first half and starting to show some control and dominance to get on the right page.”
Once they scored to make it 10-7 late in the first half, the Bonnies showed what they were capable of, scoring 28 unanswered points to take control of the match.
“Our attack is really starting to open up and getting some really good tries from lots of phase play. We’re getting hot at the right time,” Neighbour said. “If we go down and execute what we want to do, then I feel like we should be in a good place.”
Thomas More defeated Wheeling, 44-41, for the Big Rivers tournament title to earn the bye to the quarterfinals. The one common opponent the Bonnies and Saints played was Walsh University, which defeated Thomas More, 62-10, in a non-league season opener and lost to SBU, 11-10, on Oct. 5 in a Rugby East match.
“Thomas More can score and attack so our defense will have to be on point,” Neighbour said. “But that’s the thing I really enjoy about playing in Rugby East. It really battle tests you for playoffs having to put up with good attacking teams week in, week out.”
Of the eight teams in the quarterfinals, three are from Rugby East, generally regarded as the toughest league in the nation: St. Bonaventure, Walsh and Queens University.
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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure University is a community committed to transforming the lives of our students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a lifelong commitment to service and citizenship. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #6 for value and #14 for innovation by U.S. News and World Report (2024).