By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Catawba’s football team has its work cut out again on Saturday.

The Indians are underdogs on the road against another very good team. That’s been a familiar scenario, one that has played out over and over during head coach Tyler Haines’ first season at the helm.

There are a lot of positive vibes around the Indians, they are reasonably good and they are reasonably fun to watch or listen to on WSAT, but they keep playing teams that are better.

Maybe not a ton better, but better.

Catawba is a 17-point underdog at Limestone, according to the Massey Ratings. The Indians are given a 16 percent chance of shocking the world at Saints Field in Gaffney, S.C. It will be a late kickoff for a South Atlantic Conference game at 7 p.m.

Seems like just the other day that Limestone was awful. The Saints had an 0-10 season and they dropped 15 in a row not that long ago.

But now they’re good. There’s no doubt that they are good. They won at Wingate last week, and winning at Wingate is a feat. It was the first time Limestone ever had beaten Wingate.

Limestone also beat Mars Hill. That’s impressive.

Catawba, as you probably recall, did not get positive results against Wingate or Mars Hill.

The most impressive outing of all by Limestone (4-3, 4-1) may have been the overtime loss to Lenoir-Rhyne. The Bears are undefeated.

Limestone has some of the SAC’s best skill guys. Quarterback Dustin Noller squeezed ahead of Catawba’s Preston Brown at the top of the passing yards leaderboard after Brown’s modest yardage total at Newberry last week. Noller slung the ball 44 times at Wingate, so the Saints don’t mind throwing it around.

Jelani Baker is No. 2 in the SAC receiving stats behind Catawba’s Bo Pryor and has scored seven TDs for the Saints.

Limestone also can rely on the SAC’s No. 3 rusher, Tre Stewart, who averages better than than 100 yards per game. That’s important because Catawba’s most glaring deficiency at Newberry was an inability to stop the run.

Defensively, Limestone is led by thick-armed, 230-pound linebacker Chandler Matthews. He’s the reigning SAC Defensive Player of the Week after making 15 tackles against Wingate.

The series is 3-all, but Limestone has won the last two, including a 48-23 mauling of the Indians in 2022.