In all reality, this isn’t where either the Idaho State or Montana softball programs expected to be at this stage of the season.

Both sit at 8-4 in Big Sky Conference play, headed to a winner-take-all three-game series in Missoula next Saturday and Sunday.

The Bengals were the unanimous preseason choice by Big Sky Conference coaches to win the regular season title and, even though they still have a shot at doing that, truth be told, they probably thought they’d have the title wrapped up by now.

The Grizzlies, meanwhile, were picked to finish last in that same preseason poll, and they probably weren’t thinking about hosting a season finale for all the marbles.

That’s where we are, though, after Idaho State won two out of three games in all four of its conference series this season, including this weekend’s home matchup with Sacramento State.

Montana, meanwhile, came back from six runs down in the second game of their three-game series with Weber State and wound up sweeping the Wildcats in Ogden to set up next weekend’s climactic matchup.

“It was great to win the series, which we obviously did yesterday, in sweeping the doubleheader,” said ISU coach Andrew Rich, after ISU won 7-5 and 8-0 on Friday before falling 8-7 on Saturday to the Hornets. “No matter what happened today, we still have to win two out of three when we go to Montana anyway. So, we just have got to keep winning series.”

The Bengals spent all of Saturday’s game trying to dig themselves out of a 6-run, first-inning hole. The Hornets took advantage of a friendly wind blowing out to right field to hit back-to-back opposite-field homers against starter Lizzy Tommasini, and then benefitted from reliever Megan Meracle’s early wildness to put the Bengals on the defensive from the get-go.

“They (the Hornets) came out aggressive,” said Rich. “Usually they’re a little less aggressive the first time through the lineup and get more aggressive as the game goes along. They had a different game plan today and kind of jumped on (Tommasini).”

Shortstop Madi Mendoza cracked a two-run homer to open the scoring, followed by a solo shot by third baseman Madison Evers-Lyles. Tommasini gave up another hit and a walk before being relieved by Meracle, who then hit a pair of Hornets and gave up a two-run single before getting the final out of the inning.

“It would have been nice to limit it to three (runs), but we had a couple of hit-by-pitches and then you got a couple of bloop singles, and now it’s six runs,” said Rich. “We’ve got to figure out a way to limit the damage in those spots.”

To their credit, the Bengals never conceded defeat. They scored a single run in the third, two in the fifth and tied the contest with three two-out runs in the sixth on triples by Ava Brown and Jenna Kearns.

But Meracle, who recovered from her first-inning issues to pitch well through the middle innings, seemed to run out of gas in the eighth inning. Despite being helped out by a Sac State runner being called out for leaving the base too early, she gave up two runs on a two-out double followed by a pair of singles.

The Bengals still fought back, scoring a run in the bottom of the eighth on a single by Sydney Groves, who had 10 RBI over the three-game series. ISU then loaded the bases with one out, but Olivia Robison and Jaden Moore struck out to end the game.

“I was really proud of the fight this weekend,” said Rich, whose team is 32-17 overall. “We go down 6-0, it’s easy to say, ‘Let’s move on to next weekend and take care of business in Montana.’ But they fought their butts off, battled back and gave themselves a chance to win a ballgame.”

So now ISU has to prepare for a huge series with the Grizzlies. They were scheduled to play a nonconference game with Utah Valley on Wednesday, but that was canceled due to concerns about the weather, Rich said.

“Weather wasn’t looking great for Wednesday so it was just easier to cancel now than to have them (Utah Valley) come up here and cancel it closer to game time,” he said.

Rich and his staff and players will be spending a good deal of this week watching video and getting up to speed on the upstart Montana team that has caught lightning in a bottle this conference season.

“They’re just a young team that is playing with nothing to lose,” said Rich of the 18-28 Grizzlies. “They remind me a lot of when our senior class were freshmen. I think we were picked to finish fifth, maybe even last, and then they just played carefree, played with nothing to lose and won the league.”

One thing Rich knows about the Grizzlies is that they will have solid support this weekend.

“They always have great crowds there,” he said. “Every time I’ve been there, they had a great crowd, no matter what, and now they have something to play for, so I can only imagine what kind of crowd they’re going to have.”

The winner of the series will not only own the regular season conference title, but will also earn the right to host next season’s conference tournament. Idaho State, by virtue of winning last year’s regular season crown, will host the tournament this year May 4-7.

Saturday’s games are scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., with the Sunday contest starting at noon. All three games will be broadcast on ESPN+.