RPI got a good solid win today against a game WPI club. I was impressed with RPI's offense and the win helped them retain the Transit Trophy, which the two technical schools have battled for over 100 years for.

Here's the Engineers' (the ones from Troy) report card for Week 3.

OFFENSE

The offense looked great, especially since they only scored 10 points for most of the game last week against Utica. Quarterback Jimmy Robertson threw for 285 yards and three touchdowns. Sophomore Patrick McCarthy and senior Eren Savasli both had 10+ catches, the first time for a duo of Engineers receivers in four seasons. Savasli really impressed me. He had a long touchdown, fought for passes and came up with big-time catches. The only thing that kept this performance from being an A effort, were the fumbles and the lack of a running game (only 63 net yards)

Overall Grade: A-

DEFENSE

Defensively, RPI had three interceptions and stuffed the run, but Justin Wells was able to complete 21 passes for 254 yards and Mike Swanton threw for 45 additional yards. 299 is too many yards through the air. The defense bended, but didn't break.

Overall Grade: B

SPECIAL TEAMS

The third facet of the game was pretty quiet for RPI on this day. Nick Lalumia averaged 41.8 yards per punt, which is good. Other than that, Peter Nilson kicked his extra points and there weren't any really big play.

Overall Grade: B

This was a good win. It was important to get out to a good Liberty League start and say what you will about winning 11, now 12 straight matchups against WPI - you still need to get the job done. RPI proved they were the better team, but they have things to work on. Next week is at Rochester and they defeated Union today, so that should be a good game.

Other programming note: On Sunday's "In the HuddLLe" at 7:30 p.m. the guests will be....

WPI Head Coach Ed Zaloom

Rochester Receiver Pedro Sosa

Hobart Linebacker Justin Hager

Merchant Marine Academy Running Back J.J. Watson

Frank Rossi, the voice of Union College football and Eric Ren, a former RPI student-athlete, have put together a new internet radio show.

"In the HuddLLe" obviously a play on Liberty League will air at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ normally on Sundays at 7:30 p.m.

The show will run 90 minutes and the first show happened last night (Wednesday 9/24) because the league kicks off conference play this weekend with these matchups.

WPI (3-0) at RPI (2-0)
Susquehanna (1-2) at Hobart (2-0)
Rochester (0-2) at Union (1-1)
St. Lawrence (0-3) at Merchant Marine (1-2)

You can listen to the first show here.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/LLRecap/2008/09/25/In-the-HuddLLe-Inaugural-Show-1

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but the guests from the last night's show were

Rochester Head Coach Scott Greene
RPI Quarterback Jimmy Robertson
WPI Linebacker Matt Boudreau (Rensselaer native and La Salle graduate)
Merchant Marine Academy radio voice Seth Cantor (a fellow Ithaca alumnus)

Ninety minutes seems lengthy, especially when just focusing on one league, but the two seem to also want to make the show interactive and take calls from listeners, which would make for an interesting segment.

I'm in the process of trying to contact Frank and get more information, but for now I'll leave you with Robertson's take on the show (since he was already on it).

"It's something pretty cool," Robertson said. "I know a lot of guys were listening to it from around the league. It's just going to give all these teams exposure, not just within Upstate New York and the Liberty League, but throughout the whole nation.

Here's what Robertson thought about being one of the very first guests on the show.

"It feels good to be on the inaugural show," Robertson said. "I feel pretty honored that they wanted me to be part of it."