VS
#7 Richmond Spiders (12-3) vs #4 Montana Grizzlies (14-1)
Four former WPIAL players have a chance at winning a REAL college football national championship tonight. The Richmond Spiders are playing Montana in the D-1AA (also known as the Football Championship Series) Title game in Chattanooga, TN.
D-1AA is the highest level of collegiate football that plays a playoff to determine their champion. Imagine that, a playoff determine the true champion. Richmond and Montana would have both been left out of this game had it been set up with the BCS system that ruins the current system of college football. Montana entered the 16-team playoff as the #4 seed and Richmond as the #7 seed. Both teams had huge upsets along the way. Montana defeated top-seeded James Madison last Friday in the first semifinal, while Richmond has defeated two top teams each of the last two weeks. Richmond defeated third seeded Northern Iowa last Saturday, one week after beating 3-time defending champion and Big Ten runner-up last season Appalachian State. Richmond held the high-powered Mountaineer offense to just 13 points, matching the lowest output they scored all year. The other time they scored that few came against LSU, the defending BCS Champion. The Spiders also forced star QB Armanti Edwards to throw five interceptions. He had thrown just four all season prior to that game.
The Spiders have a little Western Pennsylvania flavor on the team. Four players on the Richmond roster hail from the Greater Pittsburgh area including three players that see the field quite a bit. On offense starting LG Matthew McCracken (Mt. Lebanon) and TE Joe Monteverde (Chartiers Valley), lead the way, while red-shirt freshman OL Jason Sakoian (Upper St. Clair) has also gotten reps during the year. On defense starting LB Jordan Shoop (Knoch) ranks fifth on the team with 63 tackles, he also has 3.5 sacks and 2 interceptions on the season.
The Spiders have certainly had their struggles this season starting the year 4-3 after a heart breaking loss to James Madison where Richmond allowed 15 points in the last :59 of a 38-31 loss to the top team in the nation. After that game, the chances of the Spiders even making the playoffs seemed bleak, let alone making it all the way to the title game tonight. From that point forward, though the Spiders defense has led this team on an incredible run. They have won eight straight games allowing only 13.25 points per game during that span. To put that in perspective, if they had done that all year, they would rank fourth out of 118 teams in the FCS in scoring defense.
The Spiders play in the CAA, which is basically the SEC of D-1AA. Five of the 16-playoff teams selected came from this 12-team conference. Maine was seeded 14th to begin the playoffs and lost in the 1st round to Northern Iowa 40-15. Villanova, which beat Richmond early in the season, was seeded eighth and lost to James Madison in the 2nd round. New Hampshire was the six seed and they also lost to Northern Iowa, this came in the 2nd round. James Madison also plays in the CAA and as mentioned above lost last week to Montana.
You can watch this National Championship game live tonight on ESPN2 at 8pm.
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