Cameron Burt scored a power-play goal with 7:24 left in the third period and Rochester Institute of Technology won its first NCAA Division I tournament game, upsetting top-seeded Denver 2-1 in the East Regional semifinals Friday.
The Tigers (27-11-1) will play New Hampshire, a 6-2 winner over Cornell, on Saturday for a berth in the Frozen Four.
Freshman defenseman Chris Tanev also scored for RIT, and senior goalie Jared DeMichiel stopped 39 shots to help the Tigers extend their winning streak to 11 games, longest in the country this season.
Joe Colborne had the goal for Denver (27-10-4), the top seed in the East which ended the season with three consecutive losses.
RIT, the Atlantic Hockey Association champion, is in its fifth season as a D-I program.
Tanev scored 5:04 in, jumping on a loose puck in the right circle and snapping a wrist shot to the upper left corner of the net past screened Pioneers goalie Marc Cheverie.
The score stayed that way into the third period, largely thanks to several acrobatic saves from DeMichiel, the best coming midway through the third from the seat of his pants on Denver's Kyle Ostrow.
Skating on its second power play of the game, RIT took a two-goal lead. Andrew Favot held the puck in the left circle, then slid a perfect cross-ice pass to Burt at the right post, where he slipped the puck under Cheverie's outstretched left pad.
Cheverie, a seventh-round pick of the Florida Panthers in 2006, finished with 23 saves for Denver.
Denver used its power play to cut the lead in half 1:58 later. DeMichiel made an initial stop on Tyler Ruegsegger's wrist shot, but Colborne, a 6-foot-5 first-round draft pick of the Boston Bruins in 2008, outreached RIT defenders to chop in the rebound with 5:26 to play.
RIT made 13 trips to the NCAA tournament at the Division II and III levels between 1983 and 2002, winning national titles in 1983 as a Division II team and 1985 in Division III. Its last NCAA tournament appearance came in 2001-02.
