Being 12th-ranked shouldn’t be good enough for the Southern Oregon Raiders football squad as they are faced with a big game with the seventh-ranked Montana Tech OreDiggers on Saturday for the Froniter Conference Championship.
For the Raiders (7-2), the last time they played at Raider Stadium in Ashland; they pulled an 52-49 upset over then sixth-ranked Carroll College. But they are facing a 8-1 Tech team that gave the Raiders their last loss six weeks ago.
Since then the Raiders wheeled off five straight wins, four of them featured at least 60 points scored behind Austin Dodge and the Raiders offense. Averaging 55.3 points a game for the season, almost a full point ahead of the NCAA Division-1 Oregon Ducks.
Dodge has thrown for 3,839 yards and 31 touchdowns to six interceptions this season to go along with his two NAIA National Player of the Week Awards.
The two-headed monster with Manny Barragan and Zach Marshall both combine for 1247 yards and 13 touchdowns of the Raiders 1,725 rushing yards and 27 touchdowns this season.
Barragan leads the team in rushing yards with 854 yards on the ground this season on 169 rushing attempts this season.
The Raiders offense are facing a stingy Oredigger defense that has intercepted quarterbacks 16 times this season and have racked up 33 sacks behind sophmore defensive lineman Jacob Workman’s team lead of nine.
The Orediggers have also been soild at preventing the run as they have tallied 77 tackles-for-loss that feature 13.5 from Mike Touzinsky along with 10 from Workman.
Southern Oregon are pretty good defensively as well. They are 10th in the nation in holding teams on 3rd down at 29.2 percent and are 19th in nation in holding teams on 4th down at 37.5 percent all while sacking opponent quarterbacks two times a game, good for first in nation.
Indivdually for the Raiders on defense, Kaill Robinson has racked up 84 total tackles, 52 are solo tackles. Cornerback Josh Leff leads the team in interceptions with four of the team’s 10 interceptions. In sacks, defensive tackle Juwanna Brown leads the squad with five with Austin Smith second with 3.5 sacks on the season.
These monsters of the front must step up and put pressure on quarterback Nick Baker, whom is leading the ninth-ranked passing attack and a 34.2 point a game offense into Ashland on Saturday.
Baker is averaging 264 yards a game and threw for 320 yards and four touchdowns in the double-overtime victory over the Raiders in the first meeting back on September 29th.
As for their running game, they are lead by running back Pat Hansen whom has rushed for 957 yards and 13 total touchdowns this season. In the first meeting, Hansen tallied 173 yards against the Raiders.
In order to slow down Hansen, the Raiders front seven must prove that they first can slow down the run as they are 43rd in nation in rushing defense by allowing 173 a game on the ground and must step up in their pass defense to stop the Orediggers from digging up the yardage in the air.
In the first meeting, it was a double-overtime thriller in Butte, Montana that saw the Raiders showing the Froniter Conference they can play by trading blows with Tech. Pushing them to the limits as they forced the Orediggers to score a game winning touchdown after Colin Amlser kicked a field goal to start the second overtime peroid.
Kickoff for the rematch is set for 1pm for Senior Day at Raider Stadium.
Source:
JMcDonaldMedia 
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