Men’s rugby lost 25-57 in an uphill battle Saturday against their Border War rival the Colorado State Rams.
“That was a hard loss right there,” said senior captain and center back senior Bobby Watkins. “CSU, they come out to play hard, they play just like us. They had our number today. They wanted it a little more it seemed like. We had some freshman come in and play against a well experienced team. We fell short on aggression this week. We weren’t as aggressive as them.”
Wyoming gained the first lead of the game and maintained it for the first twenty minutes before things began to go downhill. Scrum half Alex Knowles had a penalty kick in the fifth minute of play for the first points of the match. The kick was followed by two trys from 8-man Timothy Mendoza within seven minutes of each other. Knowles took the conversion point and Wyoming held their only lead at 15-0.
CSU gained three trys and two conversions all before the half to take a four-point lead, 15-19.
Knowles kicked a conversion early in the second half, putting the score at 18-22. The Cowboys would not see another gain on their scoreboard until the last minute of regulation.
The aggression on the field escalated between the Cowboys and the Rams into the second half. A series of infractions led to players on both teams losing their tempers. Multiple arguments erupted on the field throughout play.
“We just wanted to get in there and work as hard as we can to take them out,” said junior lock Scott Ericcson. “It’s our rival team and we were trying to do everything we could to stop them and it got pretty heated.”
Ericcson stepped between his teammate and other CSU players arguing on the field late in the second half.
“I’m not sure what it was over but I was getting in there to protect my teammate and get him off the field,” Ericcson said.
CSU continued to push Wyoming’s defensive line and managed to keep slipping through the cracks. The Rams had five trys and five conversions all before Mendoza and Knowles’ final points in the seventy-ninth minute.
“We wanted to step up our defense and stop their plays,” said Ericcson, who is playing in his third semester at UW. “[Next week] when we get the ball, we just want to take it and shove it down their throats. I think our focus is going to be defense and just playing the full 80 minutes.”
Despite the tough loss, the Cowboys will advance to the national playoffs for the first time since 2006. Finishing 12th in the 2014 USA Rugby Division I-A will take Wyoming to California to face Cal Poly on April 19 to see who will play in the playoff quarterfinals.
