The favorites rolled, for the most part, in Men’s D1A action in the USA Rugby Collegiate 7s Championships, with Lindenwood, Arizona, Notre Dame College, and Central Washington all moving through undefeated.

It wasn’t a cakewalk, though. For Central Washington, playing in a three-team pool didn’t exactly mean it was an easy time of it. Having beaten Cal Poly, both Davenport and Central were guaranteed a quarterfinal spot. The question was, who would win Pool D. Davenport started superbly, with Brady Erlich unleashing some ankle-breaking sidesteps to score an early try.

Erlich then scored again, right after CWU had threatened the Davenport line only to come away with nothing. When Ralph Tirivanhu galloped over it was 19-0 for Davenport at halftime and the rout was on.

Except it wasn’t.

Central did a nice job of settling down. Alex MacKenzie got one back for the Wildcats. A good team effort put Cole Zarcone over, and then Jack Wendling burst through a gap and summarily fended off his would-be tacklers to go 80 meters. That tied it 19-19.

With no time left, Zarcone broke down the sideline to finish off Davenport in dramatic fashion, and finish the day 2-0 for Central Washington.

The back-to-back #college7s defending champs, @LURugby are getting ready for a shot at a 3️⃣peat! pic.twitter.com/PPZunsOxYI

— USA Rugby (@USARugby) May 24, 2019

Arizona half similar difficulties. The Wildcats struggled to get their usual momentum going, and after racing ahead 21-0 against Ohio State, saw the Buckeyes storm back to lead 26-21. But Arizona bucked up, worked patiently pas the final hooter, and then Garrett Walker made a half bracket, was caught, and offloaded deftly to George Niethammer, who went in under the posts. Jonah Eldridge slotted the conversion and Arizona had escaped 28-26.

Notre Dame College had no such trouble. The Falcons handled Minnesota well enough, scoring twice in the second half to win 22-12, blew past Utah, and slammed Grand Canyon. Liam Tipton-Fletcher was a try-scoring machine—his six leads the tournament so far—with Matthew Smith not far behind.

Lindenwood got a bit of a wakeup call, as they were under pressure against Southern California and only won 12-5 in the opening game. After that, there was no stopping the Lions as they outscored Indiana and AIC 89-7. A better team approach made Lindenwood a better team.

Davenport did enough to get a quarterfinal spot, and so did Ohio State despite going 102. Grand Canyon and AIC both finished 2-1.

So this is how the quarterfinals matchups look:

Lindenwood vs Ohio State

CWU vs Grand Canyon

Arizona vs AIC

Notre Dame College vs Davenport

In the consolation bracket, it’s:

Indiana vs Northeastern

Cal Poly vs Utah

Arkansas vs Use

Minnesota gets a bye to the consolation semis