This article was published February 10, 2011 in the BYU Daily Universe.
After three weeks with no competition, the undefeated BYU men’s rugby team heads to Las Vegas for two tough games against fellow College Premiere League opponents this weekend.
BYU will face familiar competition in Vegas: Penn State and Cal Poly San Louis Obispo. If history can be trusted, BYU will have a successful weekend. The Cougars are 6-0 against Cal-Poly for the last six years and 5-0 against Penn State, beating PSU 84-14 in their last meeting.
BYU player David Williams expressed the team’s simple objective for this weekend — to win.
“Our goal for this weekend is just to hand it to them,” Williams said. “[To] go down there and really take care of business, to go down there and beat everyone and not hold back anything.”
BYU will also use this weekend to get into the season before conference play starts against league rival Utah on March 5. According to assistant coach Kimball Kjar, these two games are another chance for the Cougars to settle into their overall game plan and define who is going to play in their starting 15.
“[This weekend’s] just getting a good gauge as to what guys we can rely upon when we get into the conference season,” Kjar said.
In its 69-0 win against the No. 12-ranked Aztecs of SDSU three weeks ago, BYU saw the fruits of hard preparation. The Cougars have continued that discipline in preparation for Las Vegas and were even caught outside in the rain and snow recently but didn’t stop practicing.
BYU will have a chance to showcase its depth with the loss of freshman Jeff Ott, one of BYU’s wings, who pulled a hamstring in preparation for Las Vegas.
“It’s always a bad thing to lose a player. But I think this year on this squad we’ve got some guys who can step up,” said captain Dylan Lubbe of South Africa.
The depth of this year’s team is going to be a huge factor in the season’s success and one of its major advantages against opponents, Williams said.
According to a BYU news release, BYU will be Penn State’s first foe of the season today at 12:20 p.m. Cal Poly will try to mar BYU’s perfect 3-0 record this Saturday at 10 a.m. BYU’s second 15 will also get a chance against Penn State’s second team this morning.
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