Frontier Notebook: It's Northern/Carroll rivalry week already

Week one is in the books in the Frontier Conference, and for some, even week two, but for every Frontier team, this week, it’s really time to get down to business.

In the marquee matchup of the second Saturday of Frontier football action, the Montana State University-Northern Lights will travel to Helena to face the No. 12 Carroll College Fighting Saints. It’s the annual showdown between the two rivals at Carroll’s Nelson Stadium, but this season, it’s also Carroll’s home opener.

The Saints bring a decisive winning streak into Saturday’s contest. Carroll has now beaten Northern 15 straight times dating back to a 2006 NAIA playoff game in Helena. That was the season the Lights stunned the Saints in Blue Pony Stadium in Havre, but were beaten three weeks later in the NAIA’s first round.

Both teams enter Saturday’s matchup fresh off of season-opening wins, with Northern beating Dickinson State 14-0 last Thursday night and Carroll trouncing Menlo College 51-7 last Saturday in Cheney, Wash. And both wins left the opposing head coaches impressed.

“Those guys are good. To hold them to zero points is big time for that defense,” Carroll head coach Van Diest said of Northern’s defensive gem in Dickinson.

“Carroll is a very good football team,” echoed MSU-N head coach Mark Samson. “They are just solid. They are talented and they continue to do what they do and they do it very well. You saw that in the way they handled Menlo last week.”

And even though the Lights’ rivalry with the Saints has been a one-sided affair for over seven years now, the game is no less intense. Last August, Carroll spoiled MSU-N’s home-opener at Blue Pony Stadium, and the Lights are hoping to return the favor Saturday.

“We have to be mentally ready to play more than anything,” Samson said. “Carroll is a team which will really wear you down and then the mistakes start happening. Last year in Havre, we were in really good shape at halftime, but we made some key mistakes in the second half, and then they just wore us down. They did it to us again in the second half in Helena too. So we’ve got to be really mentally sharp right from the start.”

A Bear of a start

Speaking of sharp, there’s no team in the NAIA right now as sharp as the Rocky Mountain College Battlin’ Bears. And perhaps no quarterback is off to a better start than RMC junior Bryce Baker. RMC opened the season two weeks ago with an easy victory over Jamestown College in Miles City, but the Bears really shook up the Frontier early with a 35-30 win over defending league champion Southern Oregon last Saturday night in Grants Pass, Ore.

The win gave RMC an early lead in the Frontier, while it also gave Baker NAIA Player of the Week honors. In two games this season, Baker has thrown for over 700 yards and six touchdowns. He’s averaging 390 yards per game passing in what has been a rebirth of the RMC offense of sorts.

The race is on

This weekend also marks an interesting stretch of games for teams who want to vie for the Frontier title. Northern at Carroll is an interesting matchup, while first-place RMC hosts a struggling Dickinson State in Billings. Montana Tech opens defense of its share of the league crown with a tough trip to Eastern Oregon Saturday, while the Raiders will try and avoid a disastrous 0-2 start to conference play.

Things really get touch and go in week three. Carroll gets its long-awaited rematch with Tech — the Diggers’ beat up on the Saints last year in Butte — while RMC will have a bye before hosting Carroll in what could be a huge matchup Sept. 21 in Billings.

New Signal Callers

Whether it was last week, or this coming Saturday, several Frontier schools are relying on new starting quarterbacks in 2013. While Carroll (Dakota Stonehouse), Northern (Derek Lear), RMC (Baker) and SOU (Austin Dodge) have the stars at QB, Tech, Western, EOU and Dickinson are all breaking in new starters. EOU platooned the pair of Zach Bartlow and Idaho transfer T.J. Esekielu in a season-opening loss at Big Sky Conference power Portland State last Thursday night. Meanwhile, Tech will have Brian Schwarzkoph back at the controls after a year of playing wide receiver for the Diggers’. Western will start former Helena standout Tyler Hulse this Saturday against SOU, while Dickinson played two QB’s last week against Northern, with Thad Lane starting the game, but Kaler Ray also seeing plenty of action.