No. 1 Cal Breezes into Semifinals of National Rugby Championships

Cal’s No. 1-ranked rugby team advanced to the semifinals of the D1A rugby national championships, and the Bears made it look easy with a 96-12 victory over BYU in a quarterfinal matchup Saturday at Cal’s Witter Rugby Field.

Cal has defeated its first two opponents in the playoffs, San Diego and BYU, by a combined score of 184-17. However, Cal will face a legitimate challenge in its semifinal game next Saturday, when it will host East Bay rival Saint Mary's, which beat Arizona 48-19 in its quarterfinal match.

The unbeaten Bears certainly looked capable of repeating as national champions after their impressive showing against the Cougars, a game that was decided midway through the first half.

Cal’s Nate Commiskey had three tries in the first half, which ended with the Bears holding a 49-12 lead.

But the star for Cal was Filip Edstrom, who scored two tries and was 13-for-13 on conversions, including four that were converted from long range at difficult angles.

The game was essentially a warmup for Cal for next Saturday's game against Saint Mary's.

Cal has faced Saint Mary’s in each of the last five rugby national championships playoffs – three times in the semifinals and twice in the quarterfinals.

The Bears have won three of those five postseason matchups, including Cal’s 38-27 victory over the Gaels in last year’s semifinal match in Berkeley. On March 28 of this season, Cal defeated Saint Mary's 66-35 in a regular-season game in Moraga on March 28.

If Cal wins that semifinal contest against Saint Mary's, the Bears would advance to the national championship game May 2 in Indianapolis, where the opponent would be the winner of the other semifinal game between No. 2-ranked Navy and Life University.

Navy, the top seed in the East, defeated Army 31-10 in its quarterfinal match on Saturday, while Life eliminated No. 2 seed Lindenwood 31-24 in its quarterfinal contest.

Cal took control of Saturday's quarterfinal game in the first 16 minutes of the game.

BYU would have preferred a physical, low-scoring slugfest against the skilled Golden Bears, but Cal quickly demonstrated its talent superiority, making it a wide-open contest early on.

After Cal’s Comiskey and BYU’s Will Pugmire traded tries to make it a 7-7 game eight minutes into the game, Cal scored 35 consecutive points to take the life out of the Cougars.

Cal took advantage of a BYU turnover and a slick Solomon Williams kick ahead that led to Comiskey’s second try to give Cal a 14-7 lead less than 10 minutes into the game.

Rand Santos scored a try two minutes later to make it 21-7, and Comiskey scored his second try to put the Bears ahead 28-7 with 16 minutes gone in the first half.

After a Seamus Deely try made it 35-7, Max Threlkeld added a try off a long run by Deely to make it 42-7 with 13 minutes still to go in the first half.

With the outcome decided, Cal played the final 20 minutes of the game with a lot of substitutes on the field.

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