Montana Held On, Brevin Easton Went Long: Where the FCS Quarterfinals Left Us

We’re down to the FCS semifinals, and the probabilities from our model look like this (they’re included below as well, for archival purposes, but formatting is more of an issue with the table below). How we got there:

• Montana 35, Furman 28 (OT): After two great months of football, Montana finally missed a step, and Furman nearly took this from them, playing tough in the trenches throughout the night and tying the game on a sensational Mason Pline touchdown grab. On 4^th-and-10, with 20 seconds left, Tyler Huff looked to the endzone and the 6’7″ Pline went up and caught it. It looked a little like Joe Montana finding Dwight Clark. Most of the night, though, Montana stayed ahead, and in overtime, the Griz finished the deal. Missoula is one win away from sending a whole lot of folks to Texas for the school’s first national championship appearance since 2009, when they lost to Matt Szczur and Villanova.
• South Dakota State 23, Villanova 12: After nearly a full half of both offenses struggling in close to gale-force winds, Matthew Durrance blocked a Villanova punt and ran it back for a touchdown to give South Dakota State the lead. Villanova continued to hang around—they kicked a field goal to make it 10–9 before the half; they kicked a field goal to make it 17–12 early in the fourth quarter—but Isaiah Davis broke off a big touchdown run early in the fourth to extend the lead to eleven, and that’s where it stayed. SDSU held the Wildcats to field goals when they needed to, and the Jacks got out of the quarterfinals alive. Was it a bad sign for SDSU? Was it the wind? It’s hard to know for sure. They’ll get another CAA opponent this week, again as a huge favorite. This time, the forecast is a little bit kinder.
• North Dakota State 45, South Dakota 17: The Bison wasted no time in avenging their September loss to the Coyotes, leading for all but the first six and a half minutes of the game. By halftime, it was 35–3, as South Dakota’s defense couldn’t keep NDSU receivers from becoming wide-open targets for Cam Miller. It’s hard to say if NDSU is back to a caliber where they can compete against SDSU, but they’ve at least regained the footing necessary to beat up on MVFC teams not named the Jackrabbits.
• Albany 30, Idaho 22: Reese Poffenbarger wouldn’t be stopped in the Kibbie Dome, finding Brevin Easton nine times for 228 yards and three touchdowns, including what became the game-winner from the Idaho 30-yard-line late in the fourth quarter. Playing past midnight on their body clocks more than two thousand miles from home, the Great Danes found their way to a stacked semifinal round, outperforming expectations in a big way for the second straight week as they won their seventh straight game.

Movelor lines for the semifinals:

• Albany at South Dakota State –22.0
• North Dakota State –2.3 at Montana

Movelor semifinal win probabilities:

• South Dakota State: 92.4%
• North Dakota State: 56.5%
• Montana: 43.5%
• Albany: 7.6%

Full remaining FCS playoff probabilities: