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By Pat Clifton
The tier one Collegiate all-star tournament was a barnburner from start to finish. With great players from great programs on both sides of the ball, it was BYU’s Shaun Davies and Arkansas State’s David Caswell who really shined Saturday at Infinity Park.
Caswell struck first for the South with a penalty goal, and less than a minute later, Davies responded with one of his own. Caswell followed that up with his second three-pointer, and Davies took the slight edge with the game’s next score – a long range try after the attacking South lost the ball in contact. However, Caswell squeezed in his third penalty goal of the contest before halftime, making the score at intermission 9-8 in favor of the South.
| MVP Roland Evans. Wright Henry photo |
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An All-Star game is about the stars, and as Caswell at wing and Davies at flyhalf (he plays scrum for BYU) accounted for every first-half point, no one shined brighter than those two.
The South’s first attempt at extending their lead in the opening stages of the second stanza was thwarted when Benny Mateialona, the scrumhalf from Life, knocked the ball on just a couple meters short of the money line. However, South’s pack, which outperformed their Pacific Coast counterparts all night, stole the ball back at the ensuing scrum, and Caswell found enough green for the South’s first try and his 10th-14th points.
That score capped off an eight-point run that occurred while the South was a man down, and though the Grizzlies were by no means ready to concede the match, they’d be fighting an uphill battle the rest of the way – pulling off a second-half comeback against a team that just put up two scores with 14 players on the pitch and were now back at full strength.
The Pacific Coast looked like they were going to do just that after Ryan Roundy picked up a loose ball and rumbled forward, triggering a long possession, but Davies, hero of the first half, knocked it on after a poor pass. The Grizzlies would get another score when a streaking Sean Gallinger (Cal) found Marcus Henderson (Stanford) for the near equalizer, but Davies couldn’t bag the difficult conversion, leaving the South up 14-13.
Pacific Coast would mount one more charge, but UC Davis’ Tyler Henderson would lose the ball forward just a few meters shy of the tryline, giving the ball back to the South, who’d hold on for the victory. And just like that, a year after being promoted from the second tier, the NASC tier one title belongs to the South.
USA Rugby handed the man-of-the-match trophy to South number eight Roland Evans, and he had a good game, but the hardware probably should have landed in the hands of Caswell, who accounted for all of the South’s 14 points.
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