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A Look at Women's DI Playoff Brackets

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A Look at Women's DI Playoff Brackets

Arizona took the #1 seed in the Gold Coast.

The USA Rugby Women's College Playoffs look to be set as a mixture of the DI Elite teams and top teams from major conferences will play off.

On the weekend of April 21-23, the Round of 16 and Quarterfinals will be held in four locations, Palo Alto, Calif., Davis, Calif., Marietta, Ga., and State College, pa.

In Palo Alto, Lindenwood will face Washington State, and Stanford will take on Arizona.

Arizona made this playoff after garnering revenge over Arizona State this past week. The Wildcats had lost to the Sun Devils earlier in the season, but in a clash of #1 v #2 for the Gold Coast conference title, Arizona won 45-22 to take the championship. Arizona has benefited from some impressive goalkicking from flyhalf Jessica Carpenter, who has logged a rare drop goal in open play, and also added a few tries along the way. Center Brawley McCaslin, fullback Tatum Hale, and No. 8 Gabby Grinsdale have led the try-scoring charge.

Lindenwood is back from their two-game tour of Ireland, where they beat Old Belevedere and lost a close one to Highfield WRFC. The Lions have already logged wins over BYU, UC-Davis, Stanford, and Life.

At Davis, BYU takes on Chico State while UC Davis plays Arizona State.

ASU, as reported above, lost a key game for the #1 seed out of the Gold Coast. They have been very good at times, but also inconsistent. However, when wing Julia Cornella gets the ball, they as often as not can expect a try.

BYU still has Central Washington coming on April 8, where the Cougars will want to put aside a pretty humbling loss to Lindenwood in Las Vegas.

In Marietta, Central Florida takes on Virginia. Life has a game, too, but Florida Conference #2, University of Florida, won't be there, so they are looking for a backup team. Virginia made the women's DI final (one level below DI Elite) last year and lost to Davis on the final play of the game. 

Life has been having a tough time finding challenging college games. Last week they played a series of 7s games against Princeton (winning all five), and before then played, and beat, Atlanta Harlequins, SIRC All-Stars, and Raleigh Venom. Next up, the DC Furies and then the Ohio U24 All-Stars. The last 15s game Life played against another college team was Clemson las October. The Running Eagles won that game 103-0.

And in State College, Pa., Penn State (the reigning DI Elite champs) plays James Madison. Notre Dame College takes on Virginia Tech.

Penn State was on tour in the UK, beating Keele University, Pontyclun RFC, and Loughborough University. Last week's game against McGill out of Montreal had to be called off.

NDC has been excellent and earned an at-large spot. However, they haven't played 15s in anger since beating top DII team Davenport 37-3 in October. The Falcons also have beaten Norwich, Life, Army, Kent State, and West Chester, but lost to Quinnipiac.