Western Washington begins its Northwest Collegiate Rugby Conference by hosting Oregon this weekend in Bellingham, Wash.

WWU beat Oregon State last week thanks to some nice play from Nate Muir and Mac Stone up front, but they lost their captain, Lou Henson, to an injury in the first few minutes. Oregon was beaten fairly convincingly by Washington last week, and will be looking to rebound. Washington is at Western Oregon, and Gonzaga, who recorded their first DI conference win last week, will visit Washington State.

We preview the Red River games here.

In the Gold Coast, Southern California won their opener against UC Irvine, thanks to tries from center Joseph Krassenstein, prop Demarco Scavuzzi, wing Michael Suzuki, center Dimitry Veremeenko, and back Oliver Dabao. But things get hard as they take on Cal State Long Beach, which has had some tough warmup games leading up to conference play, including a 21-18 loss to UC Santa Barbara last week.

Grand Canyon lost a close on to San Diego but learned a lot and will be a tough opponent for Santa Barbara City College this weekend. And UC Irvine faces San Diego.

USD has to be happy with their 37-31 defeat of GCU.

"GCU is still a very good team and with how our conference playoff system works, we will most likely meet them again down the road if we are able to make it there," said USD Coach Andrew Castle. "Our goals are simple. Take each week as it comes, work as hard as we can and hopefully that will be enough to get us to the conference playoffs. I believe that we have the team to make to those playoffs but we are a long way off of that right now."

In the Pacific Western, Chico State beat San Jose State last week and now will face San Francisco State. Stanford at Sacramento State will tell us a lot about where both of these teams are. Sac State won't be happy with the big loss last week to UC Davis. 

Among the non-conference games of note, Cal visits Cal Poly. 

“The Mustangs typically field a solid, well-coached team,” said Cal Head Coach Jack Clark. “This is a good fixture for us. It will be an early Berkeley departure and a long day, which adds to the challenge."

Check back here for scores.