The Engineers earned a spot in the finals by upsetting a pair of previously unbeaten teams in the first two rounds of the NCAA Division III playoffs.

Saturday’s game was against the Springfield Pride, a team that was ranked in the top ten nationwide for most of the season, and with good reason: Before Saturday, the Pride had never trailed in the second half of any game this year, and had piled up more rushing yards than any other Division-III team for the third time in four years.

The matchup was billed as a shootout, with RPI’s prolific passing game pitted against the Pride’s relentless rushing attack, and the prognosticators were not disappointed. Springfield amassed 441 yards of total offense without completing a single pass, while RPI’s Dan Cole connected on 26 of 44 passes for 348 yards and five touchdowns.

A fumble by Springfield on the third play of the game gave the Engineers an early opportunity, and they took advantage: Four plays later, Cole found Jon Branche in the end zone from 20 yards out to give the Engineers their first lead of the day. Rensselaer scored on its next two drives as well to take a 17-7 first-quarter lead.

The second quarter was all about Springfield’s ball-control offense. A pair of long drives by the Pride resulted in touchdowns, putting them ahead 21-17. Another drive ended when Brent Hanson picked off a Ryan Sylvia pass at the goal line, keeping the Engineers within four going into the locker room.

The turning point in the game was RPI’s only turnover of the day: A mishandled snap on a punt was picked up by Springfield’s Shawn McGowan and run back 49 yards for a touchdown, giving the Pride their biggest lead of the day, 27-17, just over two minutes into the second half. Instead of allowing the play to be a rallying point for the Pride, the Rensselaer offense came out and scored on each of the next four drives to pull ahead for good.

In the end, though, it was the RPI defense that made the Engineers’ final lead stand up. They forced a fumble and blocked a punt that set up two of the touchdowns in Rensselaer’s 23-point run. Springfield was kept off the board entirely during the run and was allowed only one offensive score in the second half, a touchdown that cut the Engineers’ lead to six points with 6:42 left to play.

Springfield’s defense forced RPI to go three-and-out, and, after the punt, the Pride took over on its own 29. They moved the ball well to the RPI 30-yard line, but then the Engineers stuffed two straight Pride runs for losses, and an incom–pletion brought up 4th-and-16. Dustin Grosso broke open a sweep along the sideline, but Sean Doran came up and made the biggest tackle of the year for the Engineers, stopping Grosso two yards shy of the down marker.

Springfield got one last chance from 40 yards out with 40 seconds remaining, but couldn’t muster much of anything, and Sylvia’s hail mary fell incomplete as time expired to seal the win for RPI.

The previous week, Rensselaer played fourth-seeded Curry College; since the Colonels lacked appropriate facilities, RPI was the host despite being the lower seed.

The first half of the Curry game was lackluster. RPI nearly scored on its first possession, as Flynn Cochran grabbed a short pass, beat several defenders, and turned upfield with no one between him and the goal line. The Colonels’ George Lowe caught up to Cochran just before he crossed the goal line and stripped the ball; Curry recovered in the end zone for a touchback.

RPI cracked the red zone twice more in the first half, but scored only field goals. Tough defense, though, helped the Engineers’ cause. Chris Pierz blocked a punt to set up one RPI score. Tim Frame came up with an acrobatic one-handed interception in the end zone to stop a major Colonels’ scoring opportunity. On the one touchdown Curry did score in the first half, Nick Barnes blocked the extra point, and the game was tied at 6-6 going into the half.

The second half could easily be titled “The Flynn Cochran Show:” Cochran caught 10 balls in the half—as many as any two other receivers had in the entire game—for 127 yards and three of RPI’s four touchdowns. On Rensselaer’s last drive, Cochran caught the ball on four straight plays before Cole switched to Branche for the final touchdown that sealed the 34-20 win for the Engineers.

Cochran ended a brillaint performance with a school-record 15 catches for 216 yards and two rushes for 24 yards—more than half of the team’s total offense for the game.