How will the DII playoffs shake out?
As usually, there are many, many questions surrounding the playoff brackets, with multiple seeds expected from various conferences, and several play-in games likely, also.
Full transparency—we don’t know what the brackets are and likely won’t know for a while, but we are fairly confident that there will be more play-in games that last year partly because there are additional conferences under NCR, which runs all of the fall-based Men’s D2 College Rugby, and the spring-based is quite small.
Last year the bracket included four play-in games, meaning 12 seeds went straight to the Round of 16 and eight other teams needed to play in that play-in round.
The seedings are dependent on how successful conferences are in the playoffs, although NCR only has had the one year running Men’s D2 College so they were using USA Rugby history (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But the real complication is that the top two teams from 2021 are now in D1, and one of the conferences doesn’t really exist anymore.
Last year, here’s how the seeds broke out (with their finishes):
Great Midwest 3 Seeds (3rd, 9th, 9th)
Gateway 2 Seeds (9th, 17th)
Northern Lights 1 Seed (5th)
Tri-State 1 Seed (9th)
MARC 2 Seeds (5h, 9th)
Cardinals 1 Seed (9th)
NEWCRC 3 Seeds (4th, 9th, 17th)
Southern 2 Seeds (5th, 9th)
Great Lakes 2 Seeds (2nd*, 17th)
Allegheny 1 Seed (9th)
*The 2nd-place team was Adrian, which has moved to the D1 Big Rivers.
Missing are the two seeds from the MCRC, Thomas More and Marian, who have also moved to the Big Rivers. The MCRC doesn’t compete in the same way.
Added to that list is the SCRC, the Deep South, the Mid-East, and the High Peaks. We can confidently say that the conference champions will be in at least a play-in game. We might see some additional play-in games too.
So, who is in with a shot? Let’s look:
NEWCRC
While UMass-Lowell and Vermont are contenders, for sure, right now Norwich, with two straight massive wins over pretty strong teams, is the front-runner. Is this conference still strong enough for three seeds? Probably, but if they are dropped to two then the battle is going to be about who gets 1st in Pool B. Right now Lowell has a bonus point that UVM doesn’t have. But Lowell will face Norwich in two weeks and that could be an issue.
MARC
The MARC has had surprises in their conference playoffs before and likely will have just the two seeds. Villanova and Georgetown seem to be the frontrunners right now but Towson and Bucknell could shake someone up.
Deep South
Southeastern Louisiana seems to be leading the way there (see more here>>) and there would be one seed from the conference.