In the first quarter-final game of the FCS Championship playoffs, the New Hampshire Wildcats defeated the Chattanooga Mocs by a score of 35-30. New Hampshire will wait for tomorrow's clash between Eastern Washington and Illinois St in the FCS Semi-finals next weekend.

This was a very clean game, as far as penalties go, and had everything in it with multiple lead changes, fantastic, acrobatic catches, as well as some darting runs up the field. In the end, it was the defense of the University of New Hampshire that helped win the game as they clamped down on the Mocs run game in the second half. 

It wasn't expected as the University of New Hampshire trailed at halftime to the Chattanooga Mocs by a score of 21-15. It was the ground and pound game from the Mocs that UNH just could not stop at all. In fact, all three of their touchdowns in the first half were scored by way of the run, with their quarterback Jacob Huesman leading the way with 64 yards on eight carries, scoring twice. Huesman did it with his arm too as he only missed two passes out of the 17 total attempts Their defense was good, they held the WIldcats to just 155 yards total, and just a measly 23 yards on the ground. 

Current Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly was a former offensive coordinator at UNH and he has certainly left a mark on this program. Their first touchdown of the evening went 78 yards, two throws of 39 yards, to put the home side on the scoreboard first after their drive took just 27 seconds off of the clock in the first quarter. UNH's next drive, however, was a tad longer. This next scoring drive lasted a little over a minute and a half and ended on a 49 yard touchdown pass to RJ Harris.  

At the start of the second half, the Wildcats forced the Mocs into two straight three and outs. They were aided by good field position after a very short punt and nine plays later, their longest drive of the game up to that point, was capped off with a Sean Goldrich 5 yard run to give the number one team in the nation a slim 22-21 lead.

Jacob Huesman threw up a ball for grabs on the next drive and his big tight end, Favsal Shafaat completed the catch for 24 yards which was good enough for the first down after they were assessed a ten yard penalty on the previous play for holding. Huesman went to him again for the same exact amount of yardage as his last catch and brought the Mocs down to the six yard line. However, they tried running the ball on the next couple of plays with no success as the third quarter came to a close. 

On the very first play of the fourth quarter, the ball went towards Shafaat, but there was a little too much air under the ball and were forced to try the field and this time, Ribeiro drilled the field goal as he had missed on his previous five attempts. Trevor Wright picked off a pass from Goldrich in the end zone, but had stepped out first and did not reestablish position in-bounds in what would have been a huge turnover for the Mocs with just 13 minutes left to go in the game.

This was a huge turning point in the game as UNH would score on the very next play with a run right up the middle. A failed two-point conversion to keep the lead at just four points. The next offensive drive for the Wildcats took just one play for 61 yards with a little bit of trickery after a couple of pitches and the pass was completed to RJ Harris to extend their lead to 11 points. Chattanooga would get one more score, but it would not be enough as their season came to an end tonight.