Frontier Notebook: Raiders like to run the ball more

Times are tough right now for the young Montana State University-Northern football team — especially offensively. And, things don’t get any easier for the Lights.

Northern makes its only out-of-state trip of the season this week when the Lights pay a visit to the defending NAIA national champion Southern Oregon Raiders Saturday.

While the game is Saturday, the trip takes up nearly a full week. Northern left Havre for Ashland, Oregon, Wednesday. The trip is 1,037 miles one way, and by bus, takes a full 20 hours, not including stops. Since SOU joined the league, the Lights have made one other trip to Ashland, back in 2013.

And while the trip is difficult enough, as the Lights won’t reach Havre again until early Monday morning, the game will be a difficult one as well.

MSU-N hasn’t beaten the Raiders since they joined the Frontier Conference, and offensively, the game is two teams that are polar opposites statistically.

Even with an early-season loss to Carroll College, and having to replace four-year NAIA All-American Austin Dodge at quarterback, the SOU offense is humming right along. No, the Raiders aren’t putting up the kinds of numbers they did when Dodge was there, but they are still a potent offensive attack.

The Raiders are averaging 36 points and 470 yards of offense per game. And while they’ve always been a good rushing team, they are a really good rushing team this season. With a new quarterback in Tanner Trosin, SOU has turned to veteran running back Melvin Mason even more, and the result is SOU chewing up 260 yards per game on the ground.

Trosin didn’t begin the season as SOU’s starter and has struggled at times, as he’s averaging just 219 yards passing per outing. But, he still has one of the best wide receivers to throw to in Matt Retzlaff, as well as a host of others, and it seems it’s just a matter of time until the Raiders’ passing game breaks out.

Meanwhile, Northern really needs to break out offensively. The Lights haven’t scored an offensive point in their last two games, and they are averaging just 203 total yards of offense and nine first downs per outing. Northern has really struggled on third down this season, converting just 22 percent of the time, and if they are going to have any chance of keeping up with SOU Saturday, they’ll need to turn those offensive woes around in a hurry.

Alone at the Top

The UM-Western Bulldogs are for real. And now, they have the lead alone in the Frontier Conference standings. At 3-0, the Bulldogs are now ranked No. 16 and they’re about to play their biggest game in recent school history.

On Saturday, Western will welcome in No. 6 Carroll College to Vigilante Field. While Western has always seemed to play the Fighting Saints tough in the past, Saturday’s game in Dillon is a golden opportunity for Western to earn a statement victory.

But making statements isn’t the primary concern for head coach B.J. Robertson and the Bulldogs. No, they’re chasing a Frontier title and a coveted playoff berth. A win over Carroll would certainly give the Bulldogs a leg up in that chase. And not only that, but then the Bulldogs get Southern Oregon at home the following week, and considering Western only plays both SOU and Carroll once this season, if the Bulldogs can win both of their next two home games, they will be extremely hard to catch in the conference title race.

Parity and Power

Sometimes parity isn’t a good thing in a conference. On some occasions, it means the league isn’t very good. But that doesn’t appear to be the case with the Frontier.

The league has four teams ranked in the new NAIA Coaches Poll, including Carroll and SOU, both of which are inside the Top 10. With Western at No. 16 and Montana Tech at No. 21, the league is tied with the Great Plains Athletic Conference for the most teams inside the NAIA Top 25 this week.

Add to that Rocky Mountain College and Eastern Oregon have received votes in the poll, and it’s obvious what the rest of the country thinks of the Frontier.

So while the Frontier is indeed powerful on the national level, there’s also a lot of parity, and it’s been proven that anybody can beat anybody. Just last week, Carroll needed a last-second hail mary pass to beat Rocky Mountain College at home – the same RMC team that got beat 49-6 two weeks earlier by Western. And Montana Tech had jumped all the way to No. 15 in the NAIA and was unbeaten, but the Orediggers went to 0-3 Eastern Oregon and lost. That’s the same EOU squad that was shelled by College of Idaho on the opening week of the season, and the Yotes haven’t won since.

So, while Western seems to be the team to beat right now, the parity in the league has proven that a lot of things are still up in the air and a lot is going to happen in the next two months.

Early Leaders

This week marks the end of the first full month in the Frontier Conference. Here’s a look at the top performers in the conference so far.

Tech running back Nolan Saraceni is leading the league in rushing with 133 yards per game, while Northern’s Zach McKinley is second. After a monster performance against Carroll last week, RMC’s Chase White leads the conference in passing at 269 yards per game, while teammate Andre McCullouch leads the league in receiving with 7.3 catches per game and 94 yards per outing.

On the defensive side of the ball, EOU linebacker Gary Posten is averaging 13 tackles per game and 52 total stops to lead the league. MSU-N linebacker Jesse Morales is second with 11.3 tackles per outing. Northern’s Tyler Craig and Western’s Reno Ward each have four sacks to lead the league, while Craig leads the way with seven tackles for loss. College of Idaho’s Nate Moore is tops in the Frontier with four interceptions.