Bulls rugby steamrolls Mizzou 55-7

Last fall, the Rugby team beat the Missouri Tigers by more than 30 points. The Bulls hoped to replicate their previous performance at home Saturday against a Missouri University who was eager to redeem themselves.

The Bulls (1-1) came out fast after not playing last weekend and jumped ahead by 19 points going into halftime. They then continued to pour it on the Tigers, scoring six more tries and converting on five of them. The final score was 55-7.

"Mizzou is a team we play once or twice a year," head coach Bill Sexton said. "We understand their kind of play and after the game against Colorado State, we worked very hard on certain areas such as our line-outs and scrum. Our line-outs were so much better this game, and we kept coming at them in waves.

"The team did a great job of creating attacks and we did a great job of relentlessly swarming the ball. We were able to overwhelm their defense and execute our plays a lot better. They are a team who is all about capitalizing on mistakes so we couldn't give them anything cheap."

Junior captain Aaron Loida said the team improved from its first match of the season, a 17-34 loss against Colorado State on Sept. 19.

"Don't get me wrong, Mizzou is a good team, but I thought we played better against Missouri and executed our plays a lot better," Loida said. "It was a fun game, and luckily it went our way. The team overall played really well. Mizzou is always pretty good so we knew we had to come out and play hard."

Freshman Joe Krispin, who until this year had never played rugby, has taken over the kicking responsibilities. Against Mizzou scored one of the tries and converted five-of-six attempts.

After their last month against Colorado State University, a big point of emphasis was the Bulls' physical condition as they were exhausted at the end of the match.

"Our conditioning improved a lot," Krispin said. "We did a lot better in our line-outs and it was just a lot of fun and good for us as a team to win the way we did."

The Bulls will play their annual Homecoming Week alumni game at 1 p.m. Saturday. Alumni will come back and challenge the current team to a match.

Sexton said the alumni are bigger and they will try to rough the current team up a bit.

"I'm excited for the alumni game," Loida said. "The alumni do a lot for our team whether it be in form of donation or just flat out support, they take time to come back and talk with us and teach us about the game."

Although the alumni game isn't an actual match that goes on the record, Loida said he would like to see everyone out there.

"The alumni like to come out there and beat us up a little," said Loida. "It's a lot of fun to watch and everyone should be there."