Bowling Green (#9) held off a late charge from #12 Indiana to win 30-27 Saturday in Midwest college league play.

In an exciting and physical game, Indiana tried to outmuscle BGSU up front, while Bowling Green looked to punish the Mudsharks in open field.

IU’s pack used its size to great effect, led by No. 8 Kyle Strohman, who was a beast as advertised. But when they spun the ball wide, the Mudsharks weren’t clinical, and, despite a 12-3 lead to Indiana at halftime, Bowling felt they had a shot.

In the second half the Bowling Green attack started to click. Indiana keyed on dangerous center threequarter Dominic Mauer, and BGSU started to use him as a decoy. Mauer offloaded quickly, or wasn’t passed to at all, and the two or three defenders worrying about him left space for other Bowling Green backs to attack.

Mauer ended up with a try, but was mostly there to draw attention away from his teammates.

The Bowling Green forwards held on, led by a brave performance by Ohio University transfer Mike Ziegler, who engaged in a No. 8-on-No. 8 battle with Strohman that did both credit.

Hurt by a yellow card for arguing, Indiana fell behind 30-17, before scoring twice late. It wasn’t enough, as Bowling Green held on and improved to 2-0.

Also in the Midwest-East, Davenport opened their season with an 82-13 rout of Purdue. Nine players scored 11 tries, with Ryan Hargraves and Travis Kamstra notching two. JP Eloff added 13 points on kicks before giving way to fullback Griffin Benson in the kicking duties.

"Starting out the first 10-20 minutes were very constructive, we followed our pattern of play," said Davenport Head Coach Kruger Van Biljon. "After that we started to dominate and went back to our bad habits and playing individually. When Purdue came into the game again we settled down and took it to them. Overall I'm happy but there is still a lot of work ahead of us."

On Friday night, Ohio State welcomed Michigan State and defeated the Spartans 45-10.

“We looked solid in first and second phase, but when we got to third and fourth, we started to lose some structure,” said Ohio State Head Coach Tom Rooney. “Overall we played really well in the forwards, we’re developing in our back row, and in the backs we are working on our cohesion.”

The game was played Friday night so the Michigan State players could billet with the OSU team and then watch the Ohio State v. Michigan State football game Saturday. The support went both ways, as ESPN was in Columbus on Friday and shot some footage of the rugby game, and showed it during the football broadcast.

OSU moves to 1-1.