Big Sky Conference preseason favorites Montana and Eastern Washington meet Saturday in Cheney, Wash., where both teams will be trying to regroup after costly league losses.

Montana State, meanwhile, could get to test its new turf in the snow in its homecoming game against Weber State, which knocked off the Grizzlies a week ago.

Both games are expected to be sellouts.

More than 10,500 people are expected at Woodward Field for the game between No. 12 Montana (4-1, 0-1) and No. 23 Eastern Washington (2-3, 1-1). The game kicks off at 3 p.m. Mountain.

"I expect the atmosphere to be incredible this week with a lot of fans in the stands," said EWU coach Beau Baldwin. "Montana always travels well, and them coming off a loss makes it that much tougher for us.

"It's a fun, challenging situation, but it's going to be difficult for us to get a win," Baldwin said.

Montana is coming off a 45-28 loss at Weber State, while Eastern Washington gave up 623 passing yards in a 47-36 loss at Portland State.

"Montana is a different outfit than Portland State. There won't be a lot of carry-over scheme-wise," Baldwin said. "We'll just have to be ready to play and play better football."

The Griz are also looking to improve a few things after giving up nine turnovers in the past two games.

"We need to stop the run and we need to have a low error percentage on offense," said Montana coach Bobby Hauck.

EWU quarterback Matt Nichols is averaging nearly 344 yards passing and has 12 touchdown passes this season, five to Aaron Boyce, who averages 88 yards receiving. Dale Morris leads the running backs with a 57-yard average and three touchdowns.

"They're a gifted group," Hauck said "I'm impressed with their defensive line. I'm also impressed with their production on offense. They've really gone up and down the field.

"We know we're going to have our hands full," he said.

Montana quarterback Cole Bergquist averages 239 yards passing and has 11 touchdowns, including seven to Marc Mariani, who averages 115 yards receiving. Mike Ferriter averages 69 yards receiving and has four touchdown catches. Chase Reynolds is averaging 35 yards rushing and has four touchdowns for the Griz.

"They do everything well," Baldwin said of the Griz. "They are very solid on special teams and in the red zone and over the years they've mixed it up well between the run and the pass. Defensively they are physical and they play hard - they've always played with great effort.

"They're one of those teams where having the lead on them doesn't really matter, and that's the biggest challenge," he said.

Snow is forecast in Bozeman, where the Bobcats (3-2, 1-0) take on No. 22 Weber State (4-2, 2-0) at 1:30 p.m. Mountain.

"We've had two indoor games and two sunny games," said MSU coach Rob Ash. "It looks like Saturday will be a little dicey, cold and maybe wet. I feel a lot better about it than I did before we got the turf."

Montana State defensive end Brad Smith said the game will give the Bobcats a chance to see where they line up in the league.

"It's going to be one of our tougher games, for sure," he said. "The whole Big Sky Conference is really good this year. Weber State stepped up big last week, beating the Griz. This is really going to be an important game for us to see where we're going to stack up in the conference."

Montana State quarterback Cody Kempt is averaging 124 yards passing and has five touchdown throws, including four to tight end Brandon Bostick, who is averaging 43 yards receiving per game. Demetrius Crawford is averaging nearly 87 yards rushing and has four touchdowns while short-yardage back C.J. Palmer is averaging 32 yards per game and has six TD carries.

Crawford sees the Weber State game as a "must win."

"It's more (so) now that two top teams got knocked off," he said. "It's a perfect opportunity for us to ... make a statement in the Big Sky that we're a team to be reckoned with."

Weber State counters with quarterback Cameron Higgins, who averages 295 yards passing and has 19 touchdowns this season.

Four receivers - Tim Toone, Bryant Eteuati, Trevyn Smith and Cody Nakamura combine to average 246 yard receiving and a total of 15 touchdowns. Smith is the leading rusher with an average of 95 yards per game and seven touchdowns.

"The biggest thing we need to do is get last Saturday's game behind us, focus, and prepare for this week," said Weber State coach Ron McBride, whose team cracked the Top 25 of the Sports Network poll for the first time since the 2000 season. "In many ways it is much harder to play good the next week after a big win than it is after a bad loss."