Wheeling Jesuit notched a 39-37 win over Notre Dame College in Wheeling, WV, on Sunday, but does that mean WJU should be ranked ahead of the Falcons?
Notre Dame College beat Army, which has wins over Iona and Kutztown. So WJU should be around No. 10, right?
It all seems somewhat logical. And if you subscribe to the idea that a rugby team can improve over the season, and we do, then maybe you can toss aside some of the Cardinals' early losses and acknowledge the team has gotten better.
It's not that hard of a concept to embrace. Wheeling Jesuit head coach Jake Fautley has been doing an excellent job rebuilding the team following a series of coaching changes and resulting player transfers.
"The big thing for us at the moment is that all the players are enjoying themselves," Fautley said. "They are having fun at training and they are enjoying the games as well, which makes life easy as a coach as you want your players to be enjoying themselves firstly. If you are enjoying your rugby, you train harder, have more confidence, and put in big performances that we have done each week."
Diverse Attack
Getting things back to being fun is a good start when program morale has been low. But Fautley also touts his rugby players and their talent.
"We have a small but strong squad that has a lot of variety," he said. "We have our big ball carriers that give us go-forward ball, and then we have some very fast and skillful backs and forwards who can break away. The whole squad is balanced and we are improving each week as we get to know our patterns and the way we want to play."
Confidence
Fautley added that the biggest improvement he's seen in this team is the players' confidence and composure.
"We know we can compete with any team in this league with our attack," he said. "[The game against NDC] took a lot of composure to finish the game off, especially with our freshman center winning the game with his penalty kick when our heads could have gone down."
Alex Holden did the honors to win the game.
All of that is really good news at WJU, but it's not evidence the Cardinals should be ranked in the top 10. Notre Dame College lost to Navy the day before and ran out some players pushing for a starting A-side spot — not players who were all settled as starters.
Falcons head coach Jason Fox said the pair of losses were hugely educational for his team and a series of lessons he wouldn't trade away.
Currently, Wheeling Jesuit has two wins this fall, against NDC and Buffalo. The Cardinals have to have learned much from losses to Army, St. Bonaventure, and Penn State. However, Fautley did hint at one of his team's unresolved weaknesses. The coach said the Cardinals can hang with anyone on attack ... but didn't mention defense. And there's a reason for that. Take away the Buffalo game and WJU is averaging 50 points allowed per game.