Ram tough meets the Huskie howl on the prairies for a top 10 Canadian College football showdown in Regina Saturday.
In a battle of 2-1 teams, the University of Regina Rams host the Saskatchewan Huskies at Mosaic Stadium, for the only all-Sask Canada West game this season.
These two squads have met in the Hardy Cup conference championship game in each of the last two seasons and finished 1-2 in the standings a year ago.
The lone regular season Huskie-Ram matchup in 2025, won by the Huskies, ultimately determined who would finish first and get home-field advantage for that Hardy Cup final. Rams head coach Mark McConkey could see this game having the same kind of impact again.
"The last five matchups have all been under five points, win or lose. It's going to be another tight battle and it's a rivalry where there's close games and we've really brought that back over the last few years here", McConkey said.
"These single head-to-head matchups carry a lot of weight because if at the end of the day the two teams end up tied with the same record, it comes down to head-to-head for that tie-breaker."
The Rams have been without their starting quarterback, Owen Sieben, since week one. And they've been without their reigning team MVP, Marshall Erichsen, all season. Hoping to have them both back for this game, the U-of-R has to make another change to their roster by replacing receiver Blake Laidlaw, who suffered a season-ending torn ACL injury last week in Vancouver.
Coach McConkey has watched a furious competition for that starting receiver role at practice all week.
"Hudson South and Darius Crandell are both competing for that spot. They're both capable of going in there. We might even rotate them the whole game but will make a decision on game day", McConkey said.
The Huskies are ranked 5th in the nation while the Rams are 7th. They are the top two in Canada West, though a 2-1 logjam atop the early standings includes UBC and Manitoba as well.
This will be the Rams first home game at Mosaic Stadium this season as preparations for the recent Foo Fighters concert pushed their home opener to Leibel Field and so will another scheduling conflict later this fall. Coach Mark hopes the big homecoming crowd Saturday helps his team finish better than they have in the first three games this season.
After outscoring the opposition 54-12 in those contests, the Rams have been outscored themselves 29-18 in second half's including 15-0 in blowing a ten-point lead at UBC for their first loss one week ago.
"We talk about it all the time and the next play is the most important play no matter the score whether we're down 65-11 or up 30-8. We've got to execute the play so we really doubled down on that this week and I think our guys have had a good focus in practice about that and it really just comes down to execution. We did a poor job executing and ultimately that's on me as the play-caller and as the head coach", McConkey said.
This Hardy Cup rematch is expected to showcase two star players who were not in the conference championship game last November including Erichsen for the Rams who accounted for 40% of Regina's offence a year ago, and star quarterback Anton Amundrud for the Huskies, who has been the comeback story of the year after battling cancer for much of the past year.
"So happy for him that he's healthy and it's awesome to see him back. He looks like he's back to his old self but hopefully he's out of rhythm against us on Saturday", McConkey said.
Good football weather is expected for this game with a high of 21 degrees celsius in the forecast, though wind could become a factor with gusts of up to 50 kilometres per hour. This game will be broadcast live on the 620 CKRM main network and through www.620ckrm.com with the pregame show at 1:45 and kickoff at 2:00.
