It’s national tourney time again and Danny Neighbour believes his club has the ability to reach the National Collegiate Rugby title game for the third time in four years.

The Bonnies (4-3), ranked No. 4 in the latest NCR Division I poll, host No. 9 Dartmouth (6-2) at 11 a.m. Saturday in a pre-quarterfinal game. SBU is the second seed out of Rugby East and Dartmouth the second seed from the Liberty Conference. The match will be streamed on the team’s Facebook page.

“I’m confident we can get there again,” Neighbour said. “The games we’ve lost weren’t necessarily because we were outplayed for 80 minutes. We’ve lost games because of some poor decision making, or some discipline by giving away penalties in bad areas of the field. We haven’t lost games because we’ve just been completely outclassed.”

Despite a rash of mid-season injuries — six starters were out for the club’s 36-28 loss at Mt. St. Mary’s Nov. 2 — Neighbour said his club’s impressive depth allowed the team to stay alive in the postseason hunt in the nation’s toughest NCR league. Four of the 11 teams in the national tourney are from Rugby East: SBU, Kutztown, Queens and Walsh.

“I honestly have a lot of belief and trust in the guys who step up and fill the shoes of guys who start,” Neighbour said. “Anytime we bring someone in or someone goes down injured, it's the ‘next guy up’ mentality. The bar doesn’t drop.”

The first-year head coach admitted it’s a challenge choosing the 23 players who will dress each game. (Fifteen start in rugby with a bench of eight.)

“Picking a 23 now is very difficult, but that’s a great problem to have,” Neighbour said. “We’re still a pretty young team, but we have far more than 15 guys who are capable of starting.”

A win Saturday will advance the Bonnies to the quarterfinal round of the national tournament next weekend. SBU defeated Penn State for the national title in 2021 and lost in the title game to Notre Dame College in 2023.

“I think we’re a really dangerous team when we fully believe in ourselves, and we trust in our patterns and what we’ve installed,” Neighbour said. “We’ve really shown that when we do string it all together and are looking confident, we’re pretty tough to defend.”

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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).