MOSCOW, Idaho — "December in Moscow, Idaho is about playoff football. You might think it's about getting ready for Christmas, but it's for playoff football, so we are excited for our third December home game here in the last two years," Idaho head coach Jason Eck said.
The Vandals are preparing to host a playoff game on Saturday for the second consecutive season.
Idaho will face the Lehigh Mountain Hawks, who have won six straight games and knocked off Richmond on the road last weekend.
"We have a good Lehigh team coming in here and you'd love to think it is some great advantage to have a team from out east come all the way out here, but hey we had a team from the eastern time zone come out and end our season last year," Eck said.
The Vandals cannot afford to look ahead to a possible quarterfinal matchup in Bozeman with top seeded, undefeated Montana State next week.
"I need to do a good job of making sure that we know we have to play our best football and play to our standard and make sure we are not looking ahead and we are right in the moment in everything we are doing this week," Eck said.
Last year, the Vandals were taken to overtime in their second round game against Southern Illinois, but that experience should help this year's team.
"I want to make sure we have a lot of good on good in practice this week so we can get the speed of the game, because I think that is something that can happen sometimes when you have had a bye week. Lehigh is a hot team that has won six in a row and just beat a really good team in Richmond, which snapped a 10 game winning streak. They are kind of in a groove a little bit more and we have to make sure that we get that game speed back. We can't look like we haven't played in two weeks, so we will get after it pretty good in practice this week," Eck said.
A win on Saturday would cap off a perfect home slate and would give the Vandals an opportunity to rectify the embarrassing loss to Montana State earlier this season.
"This is a huge game for us to play well and to send our seniors out 6-0 at home and to become one of the few Idaho teams to win 10 games in a season," Eck said.
The Vandals and Mountain Hawks will kick it off at 6 p.m. Saturday night at the P1FCU Kibbie Dome.