ASHLAND – The Southern Oregon University football team has been laboring for over a month to get itself out of a last-place debacle and ascend all the way to the top of the Frontier Conference with five straight wins.

Now comes the really hard part for the 20^th-ranked Raiders (6-2 overall, 6-1 conference).

The fifth-ranked Carroll College Fighting Saints (7-1, 6-1) have the power to reroute SOU off its postseason path by doing what they always do: winning at home, where they are 49-2 over the last seven seasons. Kickoff is set for noon Pacific Time, and a first-place tie will eventually be broken at the 7,000-seat Nelson Stadium in Helena, Mont.

"It's going to be a hostile environment in the best venue in the conference," SOU third-year coach Craig Howard said. "They're a class program from top to bottom. They've got tradition, great coaches, and we've got great respect for them."

The Saints' run of 13 straight Frontier championships was stopped in 2012 thanks in part to a 52-49 setback at Raider Stadium that allowed SOU and Montana Tech to share the title.

The Raiders got loose on that late October afternoon, piling up 719 total yards to score their first win in the series against Carroll, which to that point consisted only of two NAIA Championship Series classics. But the task at hand for the hottest offense in the nation is to take control in a setting where the last 13 visitors have gone home without scoring more than 14 points.

SOU hasn't dipped to 14 or less in 28 contests. Junior quarterback Austin Dodge (Vancouver, Wash./Skyview) threw seven more touchdown passes last week to bring his total to 41 on the season – 11 more than the second-best total.

This matchup will pit the team that's allowed the fewest points per game in the NAIA (12.1) against the team that's scored the second-most (53.0); the team that's allowed the fewest number of first-downs per game (12.5) against the team that's tallied the second-most (31.6).

The Raiders' scores came in bunches, as usual, during their last two outings. They opened both up by averaging 25.5 points in the third quarter. Last week, in a 51-16 win against Montana Western, Dodge's first two throws of the second half went for TDs to Dylan Young (Salem, Ore./North Salem), who equaled an SOU record with four TD catches – all acquired after halftime.

"We want to score on every play; we don't run plays to set up a third-and-short," Howard said. "Against a team like Carroll our philosophy doesn't change. It's going to come down to big-time players stepping up in big-time moments."

Carroll features some of those on offense, too. Senior quarterback Dakota Stonehouse completes 68.2 percent of his passes, has thrown for 17 touchdowns compared to three interceptions, and is averaging 63 yards on the ground to go with his 175 through the air. Last year, he hit the Raiders up for 195 rushing yards, 233 passing yards and 5 total TDs.

"He's such a great competitor and a total winner," Howard said of Stonehouse. "He and Dodge are the two best in the NAIA as far as I'm concerned, so that will be fun for the fans."

Dustin Rinker, a 5-foot-9, 205-pound junior, heads the seventh-best rushing attack in the nation at 133.6 yards per game and 5.4 per carry.

A fourth-quarter meltdown at Eastern Oregon on Sept. 28 accounted for the Saints' only loss, 35-31.

To trip them up again the Raiders will need another sharp effort from their defense, which is fresh off its best showing of the season. It shut Montana Western down on its last nine drives, turned the Bulldogs over three times and produced the conference's defensive player of the week, senior linebacker Laurence Calcagno (Canby, Ore./Canby).

"I believe we're playing real team football because of how (coordinator) Berk Brown and the rest of the staff has brought the defense along," Howard said. "Those guys have done a great job and the special-teams guys are doing the right things, too."

Carroll College will broadcast video and audio feeds of the game through its website, which can be accessed by clicking here.