The Carroll College men's basketball team is looking at all the scenarios as it heads into the final two games of the Frontier Conference regular season.

The Saints (18-5 overall, 8-4) will host the University of Great Falls (8-20, 2-10) tonight before playing No. 17 MSU-Northern (20-7, 9-3) on Saturday. Both games will be played in the Carroll P.E. Center and are scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.

Carroll, like much of the conference, is in a tight race for the top two spots in the Frontier standings. They trail No. 8 Westminster (24-4, 10-3) and Northern, who have three losses apiece, and are tied with Rocky Mountain College (19-8, 8-4) with four losses.

Ideally, the Saints want to sweep their final two home games and want Nothern to beat Rocky on the road tonight. That would give the Saints a claim of the second seed in the Frontier tournament and home-court advantage.

Before they can look past the weekend, however, they have to concentrate on a UGF team that they struggled to contain the last time around.

"There's nobody in the league that's been able to stop their offense. They really score a lot of points," said Carroll head coach Gary Turcott. "We sure didn't stop them in Great Falls, we just outscored them. We had the shoot the lights out to beat them.

"We hope we play better defense this time."

Carroll eked by the Argonauts in their 91-87 win on Jan. 31.

Rayshaun Ames scored 21 points while Levi Lopez and B.J. Meridyth scored 20 apiece for the Argos, making it difficult for the Saints to keep up.

"Rayshaun Ames is a great player. They've got good shooters and you're working so darn hard on that Ames that the others can get away from you," Turcott said. "Meridyth was just a streak, he blew by us."

Carroll needed some hot shooting from behind the 3-point arc to put the game away. The Saints were 16-of-35 from treyland with senior guards Chad Vaculin, Josh Saunders and Scott Stockwell each hitting four 3s.

"There was a real critical point in that game between the 10-minute mark and the 5-minute mark, we hit about five 3s," Turcott said. "(If we hadn't) we would've lost that game."

Saunders finished with 18 points, Stockwell 15 and Vaculin 14 in the contest. However, the Saints were led by freshman Andy Garland with 27 points and eight rebounds. He was also 3-of-6 from behind the arc.

While Carroll has been tidying up their defense and Turcott believes it's the strongest it's been all season, they've also developed a new offense that will surely have the Argos spread out across the floor.

The Saints used the new system to upset Westminster 78-71 on Saturday and are expected to trade between it and their previous motion offense to keep their opponents off-balance.

Carroll's coach said that he knew it would be risky throwing in a new scheme so late in the season, but it was necessary and has been panning out well for the Saints.

"When we played Rocky, we just felt like at the end of the game we were too predictable with our offense," Turcott said. "We've run it for a lot of years and the second time through everybody scouts so hard in our league that we just needed to roll the dice and make some changes.

"It was a risky decision because it's late, but I think the kids are comfortable with it, I think they're enjoying it and they have more freedom and more space to make plays."

Jeff Windmueller: 447-4065 or jeff.windmueller@helenair.com