Coming off a 4-and-4 regular season, a three-way tie for second place and barely securing a home-field playoff game, the Saskatoon Hilltops finally broke through with their best performance of the season with a 44-16 victory over the Edmonton Wildcats. Flashback to the Hilltops home-opener, where Edmonton handed the Toppers a shocking 28-22 loss followed by a 17-13 Hilltops victory in Edmonton a few weeks later. Now going into their third meeting of the season, the home team had yet to win, Edmonton won their final regular season game, and Saskatoon had lost three of their final four games of the season.

A brisk Sunday afternoon in October is maybe what the Saskatoon Hilltops needed to find their rhythm, putting together the best performance of the season by far, both on offence and defence. A slow first quarter only saw a 22-yard field goal from Ryden Gratton to give Saskatoon the early 3-0 lead. Early in the second quarter, the Toppers started to click thanks to a huge punt return from Charles Sawi to set up an eventual quarterback sneak from Sam Bazarkiewicz to increase the Toppers lead by 10. After giving up a safety, Saskatoon responded with three straight touchdowns from Corbin Ebben, Donovan Harkness, and a Pick-Six from Carson Holcomb, increasing their lead at halftime to 31-2.

Edmonton started the second half strong with an expected pushback, finally finding the endzone early in the third quarter and again late in the fourth. Too big of a deficit and time started to become the enemy for Edmonton, with the Hilltops defence coming up big in the fourth quarter with two turnovers on downs, plus one final touchdown from Brady Nelson to make it a 44-16 Toppers lead, the eventual final.

As many predicted and hoped prior to the season, the P-F-C Final will indeed feature the two Saskatchewan powerhouses and longtime rivals, Regina Thunder and Saskatoon Hilltops will meet next Sunday in the Queen City. Following is audio from today’s postgame media scrum with Hilltops head coach Tom Sargeant…