Seeding the pools for a college sevens tournament like this weekend's USA Rugby National Championships can be a difficult task.

You've got to make a lot of assumptions about the relative strength of the conferences and give a little credit for past performances.

The pools for the men's DII tournament on Friday, May 19, to Sunday, May 21, at Infinity Park in Glendale, CO, are, perhaps, less predictable than the others, because the teams involved are less likely to travel and thus be tested against unfamiliar opposition.

Here's what we think:

Pool A

Principia
Norwich
Southern Connecticut
Hartford

Principia plays really good sevens and has a ton of speed. SoConn and Hartford take sevens pretty seriously, and Hartford has some unfinished business after a bad end to its fall 15s season. But we really like Norwich here. Led by the explosive scrumhalf Tom St. Pierre and Eric Pierone as a scoring threat, the Cadets could be in for a good weekend.

Pool B

UNC Charlotte
Drexel
NC State 
UT San Antonio

This is perhaps the least strong pool of the three. No one has dominated, but UNC Charlotte had plenty of competition in the South. The 49ers had to get by Furman in the championship final, and UNC Wilmington wasn't bad, either. 

Pool C

St. Louis
UW-Whitewater
Endicott
William Paterson

St. Louis has come very close the last couple of years (finalists in 2016) and plays a very nice team game. Endicott, too, has skills, and Paterson plays hard. But it's difficult to match the team play and athleticism of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The current 15s DII champs should be a contender in sevens, too, just as Duluth was last year.

Making a little error in pool play won't hurt too badly as eight of the 12 teams make the quarterfinals. We're not in a position to predict all of the top eight, but Principia, Norwich, UNC-Charlotte, Whitewater, and St. Louis should be there.

This tournament always brings a few surprises, but we're going to say it'll be Whitewater versus Norwich in the final. But we could be wrong.

Note: Did they seed this correctly? Generally, yes, although Pool C and Pool A look a shade tougher than Pool B.