Big doings in the Liberty Conference as league-leaders Fairfield were upended by Iona in the NCR D1 conference.
The 24-16 victory put Iona at 1-0 and dropped Fairfield to 3-1 and opened things up in the conference.
Iona started slowly and Head Coach Paul Burke lamented the unforced errors that undercut their attack. But that was start-of-the-season rust. Iona's season has not started particularly quickly what with the Liberty season presenting them with a bye in the second week, and the first week resulting in no game due to lightning. So here the Gaels were, opening their season in late September. Clearly it took a few minutes to get it all to come together.
Fairfield ran out to a 16-0 lead and seemed to be in control.
"It was a really big gut-check for us to come back from 16-0 down," said Burke.
Tighthead prop Kian McGeever, flanker and captain Conor Byrne, and fullback James Phelps led the way as Iona scored four tries to overhaul Fairfield.
Meanwhile, the other team that lost out on that lightning game was Siena, which did get a game against Syracuse last week and this week faced off with 1-0 AIC. Wing Rory Wood scored three tries and Sennen Grove added two as Siena beat AIC 32-26 to move to 2-0.
Dartmouth is also at 2-0, and had a bye, while Brown went to 2-0 with a tough-minded 17-0 shutout of Syracuse.
So it is crowded at the top with Fairfield still very strong, Brown, Dartmouth, and Siena 2-0, and Iona having made a statement with their victory. AIC is certainly not out of it, and a team to watch is potentially Fordham. Having lost two games by very clim margins, Fordham took down Northeastern 47-17 to move to 1-2. But its. 1-2 with two close-loss bonus points and they are nowhere near out of it.
Latest NCR D1 Liberty standings (unofficial)
| Liberty D1 | W | L | T | PF | PA | PD | BT | BL | Pts |
| Fairfield | 3 | 1 | 0 | 131 | 55 | 76 | 2 | 0 | 14 |
| Dartmouth | 2 | 0 | 0 | 88 | 21 | 67 | 2 | 0 | 10 |
| Siena | 2 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 33 | 45 | 2 | 0 | 10 |
| Brown | 2 | 0 | 0 | 71 | 0 | 71 | 1 | 0 | 9 |
| Fordham | 1 | 2 | 0 | 77 | 52 | 25 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Nazareth | 1 | 2 | 0 | 64 | 93 | -29 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| AIC | 1 | 1 | 0 | 39 | 43 | -4 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Iona | 1 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 18 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Harvard | 1 | 2 | 0 | 38 | 126 | -88 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Syracuse | 0 | 3 | 0 | 35 | 92 | -57 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Northeastern | 0 | 3 | 0 | 38 | 151 | -113 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
