Here’s a truth – for true expansion sides, getting to the USL Championship Playoffs is a difficult endeavor.

Yes, of the league’s recent arrivals, both Oakland Roots SC and Detroit City FC earned postseason berths in their first campaigns, but they were both previously established clubs with playing histories before stepping into the Championship.

For true expansion sides, you have to go back to 2019 for the last time one reached the playoffs. That season, Austin Bold FC, Birmingham Legion FC, El Paso Locomotive FC and New Mexico United each made it in, with Locomotive the cream of the crop as a No. 6 seed.

The changes that have occurred in the Championship – and the elevation in the quality we now see on the field just five years later – makes what Rhode Island is doing pretty remarkable.

The side’s undefeated streak reached seven games on Saturday night with the first comeback win in club history as Zach Herivaux – who apparently cannot stop scoring now – bagged the winner in a 2-1 victory against fellow playoff contender North Carolina FC.

It’s a far cry from the way the side started the season, fit to be tied and waiting until its seventh game to log its first victory. Now Rhode Island has won three in a row, five of its last six and has a five-point cushion to the teams below the playoff line.

This weekend, Head Coach Khano Smith, 2023 Championship Player of the Year Albert Dikwa and the rest of Rhode Island’s first-year squad gets the national spotlight on the CBS Television Network against Detroit City FC. In what was supposed to be a year for development before the club’s world-class stadium opens next year, Rhode Island has a chance to make a statement about where it is now, and where it’s going next.