A First Look at D2 College Playoffs

10.10.2022

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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.

Southern Conference

With some teams moving up to DIAA the Southern Conference is wide open. Furman, NC State, UNC Charlotte, and, still, UNC Wilmington are all in contention to win the conference. The Southern had two seeds last year and we’d expect two this year, too.

Allegheny

IUP leads the way and has been GRR’s #1-ranked team, but it’s a small D2 conference so don’t expect more than one seed.

Mid-East

The Mid-East is a new conference and Miami of Ohio is 3-0. Another small conference so probably one seed, but you could see a scenario with the #2 team (likely Middle Tennessee State) getting a play-in game.

Tri-State

Marist leads the way here and Tri-State is still hoping for more than one seed into the national playoffs, but they won’t get it.

Cardinals

Virginia leads the way here. One seed.

Great Lakes

Grand Valley State is back and playing very well. Likely, based on the conference size, they get two seeds and that might well be Central Michigan. However, CMU is looking a bit vulnerable and could be overtaken by someone else.

SCRC

New to NCR this year, and led by Auburn. Auburn vs Memphis this coming weekend is a huge game. Is the #2 team coming out of this conference good enough to warrant a play-in game? Yes, probably.

Gateway

This conference has expanded a bit and we already took a look at Washington University coming along. Principia appears to be the strongest team here, but Central Missouri is a team to watch, also. This conference certainly deserves two seeds. One of those three we have mentioned would then be squeezed out.

Great Midwest

This conference is wide open this year, although Northern Iowa and Marquette look to be the front-runners. Does it deserve three seeds as this conference has historically been given? It’s a legitimate question, as it is difficult to find a third team that is close to the top two. They likely will still get three, and Wisconsin-Whitewater may be that third team.

Northern Lights

This conference still struggles to get numbers. They probably should only get one seed and it’s not completely clear who that would be.

High Peaks

Montana State leads this by a decent margin.

So for all of that we have perhaps as many as 24 teams in the playoffs. If we did that, then you’d have only eight teams go straight to the Round of 16 (we’d guess winners from NEWCRC, Gateway, GMW, Allegheny, High Peaks, and SCRC plus two more). The reason we say High Peaks is mostly due to travel. It would be a little tough to expect, say, Montana State to play someone a week or two before the Round of 16 and not know if they needed to make the trip or not.

With 24 teams, that would mean having a second seed from Great Lakes, SCRC, and perhaps Gateway.