(Jim Watje photo)

There was a fair bit of action across the western portion of the nation Saturday despite winter storms that have caused more scheduling headaches.

Some conferences were disrupted by the weather with some games going ahead and others being postponed.

In the Texas Conference, #7 LSU pounded Texas 65-5, while the match between Sam Houston State and #14 Texas A&M was rescheduled.

ARN All-American Adam Ducoing scored a hat-trick of tries within the first 15 minutes of the contest for the Tigers, who also had strong games from Jeff Levasseur, Cullen Glennon and Robert Johns.

In the Northern California Conference, there were wins by #6 UC Davis and #8 St Mary’s despite heavy rain. UCD topped a spirited Stanford 20-10, while the Gaels beat Sacramento State 37-18.

Davis outscored the Cardinal by three tries to two. SMC looked much better in their game after a couple of patchy performances.

(Sheri Batten photo)

They scored some well-worked tries and showed glimmers of what we’ve come to expect from them in recent years.

In the Southern California Premier League, #22 UCLA has made things almost impossible for Cal Poly with a 30-12 win at home in west Los Angeles.

The Mustangs remain winless in league play and while they’re still in the hunt mathematically for one of Southern Cal’s three seeds for nationals, they’ll need to win most, if not all, of their remaining five games and earn bonus points, as well as get some help from other teams if they’re to be a factor.

In the other Premier League game, #5 San Diego State shut out #23 Arizona 27-0 to take what looks to be an unassailable lead in the standings.

Elsewhere, reigning national champions #2 BYU hammered Utah State 86-0. Under overcast skies in Provo, UT, the Cougars were able to run in a total of 14 tries and play some solid rugby led by captain and flyhalf Dylan Lubbe, who dotted down four times on his own.

Given the one-way flow of the game, assistant coach Wayne Tarawhiti felt his team could learn some solid lessons from this performance.

“We struggled a bit at the break down,” he said, “but the good news is that the guys took on the lessons from last week, improved on most of them and we’ll do the same again this week.”

#3 Utah had been set to play Snow College, but the smaller school forfeited the match because of field availability issues.

In the Pacific Northwest Conference, #15 Central Washington kept its unbeaten league record intact with a 53-3 caning of Washington State.

WSU opened the scoring within the first two minutes by taking advantage of a miscue in the midfield, but then CWU rattled off 53 unanswered points.

The Wildcats’ scoring started at the 5 minute mark when outside center Tim Stanfill scored off a well serviced ball from hooker Adrian Puliczinski, who turned the ball over in the center of the field, stepped two players and pulled the ball back to put Stanfill away.

Stanfill would go on to score two more tries before the half to post a hat-trick on the day.

CWU led 22-5 at halftime and then ran in five more tries to complete the scoring.

“The boys played well today,” Central Washington head coach Bob Ford told ARN. “We left some points on the field, but all in all we are happy with our development thus far.

“Going forward it will be important for us to keep developing our pool of players and it is exciting to look ahead knowing how hard these guys are working on and off the field.”

In the other PNW league match, Washington beat Oregon 16-10.