CHICAGO – Two big name schools are set to clash on college rugby’s biggest stage this Friday night as DI stalwart Wisconsin prepares to take on DI-AA powerhouse Louisville. The Badgers will duke it out with the Cardinals at the Lions for Hope Sports Complex, home of one of the premier rugby programs in the Midwest, the Chicago Lions.
The teams enter the contest on somewhat different trajectories early in the fall 2026 season. Wisconsin, while generally very competitive in the region, is coming off back-to-back losses against Notre Dame (62-14) and Iowa (61-17) to start the year. But the Badgers have watched the tape, had the tough conversations, and are confident that the diagnosis for their season isn’t fatal.
“I think the big thing is just chemistry and really just finding our rhythm,” said Wisconsin superstar Emilio de Palm – one of several veteran players along with Owen Clovas, Victor Vasconcelos and Eric Harris, who have been playing together on the first side for four years and have been tasked with bringing along a team filled out with talented but inexperienced underclassmen.
“Despite the matches not going our way, I feel like we had moments in both of them where, you know, we showed our system and we showed that we can play together as a cohesive unit,” de Palm continued. “It’s really just about putting together eighty minutes of that.”
Louisville, on the other hand, opened its 2026 season with a huge 29-27 win over the defending national champions in DI-AA, Tennessee. But the Cardinals aren’t allowing themselves to get too wrapped up in the win over the Vols, as it was a back-and-forth affair with neither team taking a definitive lead at any point in the contest.
“You can probably play that game ten times over and have ten different results,” said Louisville coach Emil Walton, who splits head coaching duties in the fall season with fellow coach John Henry Karstens. “For the boys, though, it was a massive confidence builder, knowing that we deserve to play there and we can definitely play with some of the what I would consider the bigger teams. So, I think that gives us good momentum going into the season.”
The Cardinals still feel like they’re on the outside looking in at the programs that are consistent contenders in the fall XV’s season, some of whom have existed for multiple decades longer than the Louisville program has. But the team has been making strides on that front, coming up just short in the semifinals last fall against a Bowling Green team they felt they were good enough to beat.
The team has also had plenty of success in 7s, with the Cardinals coming off a huge National Championship victory at the 2026 Collegiate Rugby Championships last spring. That code is baked into Louisville’s DNA, as its greatest strength is a backline made up entirely of players capable of juking you in a phone booth. (For our younger readers, phones used to be stationary and lived inside small, glass boxes on street corners. Wild times).
Players like Ryan Cammarata, Jack Eberle, Rocco Balestreri, and All-Americans JB Meier and Bliss Archibald lead the league collectively in a statistic we just made up called DATP (Defenders Ankles Taken per Possession). Even Louisville’s tight-five players are required to participate in the spring 7s program each season, with coach Walton doubling down on the old Mike McDaniel-Miami Dolphins Speed Over Everything approach.
“Whether you’re a prop, or a flanker, or a lock, even if you’re not going to make the starting sevens, it doesn’t matter. I still want you to come to sevens training and learn those skills and see how the field is set up and how you can look for the space,” Walton explained. “We very much try and harp on just having a free-flowing, sevens style of rugby … and we want to play our game. We want them to adapt to us, we’re not going to adapt to them.”
Taken all together, it’s very much not a secret that when Louisville lines up across from you, they’re looking to run you out of the building. It’s what Wisconsin has been preparing for this week in the lead up to the match, and something the Badgers feel confident that they’re prepared to handle.
“We have a lot of speed in our back line too, a lot of sevens experience,” said the captain, de Palm, who will be asked to cover a lot of ground on Friday. “They like to get it wide, they like to get it to their fast, shifty guys. But I think it’s something that we can counter.”
Wisconsin also has the size that has given Louisville fits in the past. Remember that semifinal loss against Bowling Green we mentioned earlier? The Cardinals lost that game due in large part to the fact that BGSU had players like Phil Tracey, who could/should have signed an NIL deal with the Ohio Beef Council. The Badgers have plenty of Tracey-esque runners themselves, with head coach Kurtis Shepherd pointing to de Palm and starting tighthead prop Jackson Skarie – the president of the club who weighs in at 240 pounds and is, allegedly, six feet tall – as two players capable of taking it to the Cardinals in the power run game.
Despite these potential advantages, and the fact that they play in a higher division, Wisconsin understands that the Cardinals are still a real threat come game time.
“A good program is a good program, as far as I’m concerned,” Shepherd told The College Rugby show. “They’ve shown that they can compete against anyone. They’re a very talented team and, you know, they’re to be respected, but not feared.”
The Badgers also understand that they are not yet a fully realized version of themselves. For Shepherd, the ideal version of a Wisconsin gameplan features running rugby with a heavy dose of kicking – a style that he feels like the team currently has the pieces to play, but one that takes time to settle into.
“We’ve got some really strong runners and we’re trying to build our offense around really running towards the goalposts,” said Shepherd. “We’re still figuring out how to play wide off of that, but we’ve got some strong bodies. And it’s all about getting those key players the ball, but also getting them in positions where, you know, ‘I’ve got a soft shoulder, I’ve got a gap.’ Not just, ‘we’re going to give this guy the ball and hope that something happens,’ right? It’s building phases towards putting your power players in position to make the use of all of their talents.”
Once these things start to click for the Badgers, the team has the potential to be incredibly dangerous. But have they had enough time together so early in the season for all of the pieces to start to fall into place? And could the pressure of a primetime game in front of a national audience potentially give them the boost that they’ve been looking for?
“I don’t think that it will make us fold under any sort of pressure, or feel like we need to meet some sort of expectation,” said de Palm of playing under the watchful eyes of the college rugby world. “It really just makes us more excited to go out there and really just show everyone in the country who watches National Collegiate Rugby what we’re about and how we play.”
Louisville coach Walton says his boys are also excited to get a run in under the lights on Friday night, but that he is also excited for his players to get put in a pressure situation like this early in the season. Walton says he’s seen some of his teams in the past get lost in big moments, causing them to come up short in games that they otherwise may have won.
“I much rather want those pressure games early in the season, because that gives me enough data to figure out what I need to figure out before the end of the season,” Walton explained. “So, I’m very happy to see what they can bring to the table. Obviously we’ll see what the players end up doing, but I think they’re very enthusiastic to step up to the challenge. So, if you’re going to tune in, I’m sure there’s going to be some exciting rugby on both sides of the ball.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, coach. Listen to Emil and catch all the action on NCR TV.
Also, make sure to catch all the exciting games on this year’s FNR slate, found here.
