Individual Game Recaps Aggies Seek Revenge, End Cardinals Season 4/4/2008 Friday April 4, 2008 UC Davis 25 Stanford 20 The UC Davis Aggies and Stanford Cardinal had already met twice earlier in the season with Davis winning one of the matches and tying the second. The Aggies were tremendously disappointed in the tie and wanted a resounding win over the Cardinal in the first round of playoffs in order to play Saint Mary’s the following day for a trip to the sweet sixteen. Davis came out to the opening whistle fired up and appeared headed for an early blowout. Fullback Danny Nolan made two great runs to lead to the first two tries. For the first try he beat his slower defender, ran a good 30 meters, drew another defender and made the pass to speedy wing Tyler Harrisson who cannot be caught in the open field. For the second try Nolan kept the same formula, this time passing to center Chris Buck for the score. With the defense playing lights out it seemed as though Davis would get the dominating performance it was looking for. Instead, the Aggies reverted to the inconsistency that had plagued them all year and began committing foolish turnovers and penalties. The ball did not move as quickly though the hands of the backs as it should have and forwards stopped doing the necessary dirty work once the lead was established. Stanford clawed their way back into the game and the score was close at halftime, with the Aggies leading 15-10 thanks to the two tries and a penalty kick from fly-half Julien Howsepian. As the second half began things turned even worse for Davis. The Aggies continued to commit foolish penalties in their own zone, and Stanford responded by scoring tries and kicking penalty goals. Davis does not have an especially large pack and a few of the Stanford forwards were powerful runners who were able to break tackles and offload the ball for long gains. Thankfully, the Aggies were able to force a Stanford turnover and thanks to some hard running of their own brought the ball all the way to the try zone where Howsepian was able to touch it down after breaking a tackle. Davis got the win by a score of 25-20 and will play Saint Mary’s tomorrow for the rights to enter the Sweet Sixteen. UC Davis 1-15: Gus Brown, Jacob Litensky (Dan Hudes), Collin Clark, Jimmy Wessel (Reid Robinson), Levi Ryan (Jordan Bruno), Sam Shackelford, Johnny Volan, Mark Miller, Jon Parshall, Julien Howsepian, Tyler Harrison, Tom Warner, Christian Buck (Jake Mayers), Danny Nolan, Ross Warnloff (Ryan Gamba) TRIES: Harrison, Buck, Howsepian CONVERSIONS: Howsepian (2) PENALTIES: Howsepian (2) UC Davis Men's Rugby Club 232 Activities and Recreation Center University of California, Davis 95616 Copyright 2006-2007, Julien Howsepian