West Lafayette, IN - With an improvement on last weekend's result, Penn State Men's Rugby took 2nd place behind a strong Indiana University team at the Boilermaker 7s on Saturday, 9 April.
In blistering conditions and wet under foot that Penn State Men's Rugby team opened the day with a convincing 43-0 victory over a spirited University of Michigan team. In a rare display of slow game tactics from Michigan, who spent majority of their time in possession running short ball options off a breakdown, managed to frustrate the Nittany Lions early on. After a few bruising encounters, the Lions held up the ball runner and turned him over. This opened the flood gates for the lions who scored 43 unanswered points in the match.
In the second pool match of the day the Lions took on the Spartan's of Michigan State in a rematch of last week's pool action. In a similar fashion the Lions dispatched the Spartans 43-5, setting the team up as the number 1 seed moving into the championship rounds of the tournament.
With some heated battles in the other 2 pools on the day, Purdue emerged as the number 4 seed and semi-final match up. The Nittany Lions played well and were able to manage the clock and energy winning that match 29-5 and putting them on a collision course with series leader Indiana University.
The final was a back-and-forth affair with neither team really being able to get into a good rhythm. Indiana was able to build a 19-7 lead, with time winding down Penn state broke off the edge, Jesse Capriotti went in under the posts to close the gap. Unfortunately, time was not in the teams favor and Indiana would take the game 19-14 and extend their lead in the Big Ten Sevens Series.
The beauty of sevens is the team will get to regroup this week, adjust, and look to improve into the final tournament of the series at Michigan, Saturday, 16 April.
