Lights set to host Raiders in Souers' first home game

After months of hard work, it is finally time for the Montana State University-Northern football team under new head coach Jerome Souers to play in front of home fans at Tilleman Field. The Lights will look to win their first game of the season as they are set to play Southern Oregon University this Saturday. The Lights are coming off a 31-3 loss to College of Idaho on the road to start the year, so Souers hopes to see improvement this weekend.

"When you look at any season, your biggest jump usually occurs between game one and two and we need that to take place for us," Souers said. "We've been grinding pretty hard and hopefully we have more of a consistent full team effort."

This weekend will see record high temperatures for the area, so the kickoff time was moved from 1 p.m. to 11:30 a.m. Elsewhere, Rocky Mountain College also moved its kickoff time against College of Idaho in Billings to 11:30 a.m. Despite these unusual circumstances, Souers does not expect it to impact how the Lights play.

Both teams come into the contest with an 0-1 record to start the year. The Raiders started their season last week at home with a 27-10 loss to Rocky Mountain College. Coming into the season, the Raiders were picked to finish seventh in the Frontier Conference in the preseason coaches poll. Last year, the Raiders finished the year with a 3-7 record, but one of their victories was a 42-7 win over the Lights in Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon.

After a slow day on offense against RMC, the Raiders will look to pick things up against the Lights. Blake Asciutto got most of the snaps at quarterback last week as he completed 15 of his 34 pass attempts for 161 yards, a touchdown and an interception. In his limited time on the field last week, Matt Struck went 3-for-6 for 23 yards.

The SOU quarterbacks will have plenty of options to throw to this weekend. Christian Grane started the season with four catches for 54 yards while fellow wide receiver Ben Graziani caught four passes for 45 yards and a touchdown against RMC. Even though Bryce Goggin only caught two passes for 20 yards last weekend, he should make an impact after being named first-team all-conference last year. Christian Quira will look to make plays out of the backfield as he ran for 45 yards on six carries last week.

"They're going to throw it around now and they're a little more committed to running the ball," Souers said about the SOU offense.

The Lights also could not move the ball consistently to open the season. Against CofI last week, Brenden Medina started the game at quarterback where he completed 13 of his 28 pass attempts for 109 yards. His leading receiver on the day was Luke Triplett with two catches for 30 yards. The running game did not get much traction either as Mason Dionne led the Lights with 21 yards on eight carries. If the Lights want to compete this Saturday, the offense will need to pick things up.

"(We need) consistency. There were times we played really well and other times where we didn't. We need to string more of those series together," Souers said. "It's more so than just any offensive series, defensive series or the kicking game. They need to all play together. All three components."

The Lights will also need to watch out for playmakers on the SOU defense. Linebacker Jake Regino led the Raiders with two tackles for loss against RMC while defensive linemen Alejandro Sanchez and Noah Turnbull each recorded 1.5 tackles for loss. In the secondary, defensive back Dyllon Daniels will look to continue his strong start to the year after grabbing two interceptions against the Bears.

With this being a rebuilding year, the Lights are set to face plenty of adversity this fall. But like the Lights, the Raiders are a team trying to find an identity so Souers believes this weekend's game will be a competitive contest between the two squads. If the Lights want to pull it out, they will need to respond after a tough loss to start the year.

"We need to bounce back. We need to rally off of what was a tough road loss," Souers said. "We have expectations of ourselves and we didn't meet those expectations and not create the outcome that we all look for but we got another chance with this opportunity at home and a chance to try to get some of this stuff right."

The MSU-N football team will kick off against SOU Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Tilleman Field.

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