The Sacramento State football team heads into Portland, Ore., looking to make it four straight wins against Portland State University in its final road game of the season.

In last year’s game, the Hornets controlled the Vikings from start to finish and won the game 28-15.

Senior quarterback Jeff Fleming threw for 240 yards and three touchdowns and senior wide receiver Chase Deadder hauled in four of Fleming’s passes for 116 yards and one touchdown.

For the Vikings, then junior running back Cory McCaffrey ran all over the Hornet defense for 187 yards and a touchdown. Then sophomore kicker Zach Brown had the Viking’s nine other points after connecting on two 40-plus yard field goals and a 24-yard chip shot.

The Hornets are 3-5, 2-4 on the season and with last week’s loss, their playoff hopes are pretty much gone. The Football Championship Subdivision playoffs committee has never selected an at-large team with more than four losses, so if history repeats itself the Hornets will not being playing after the regular season.

Injuries have hurt the Hornets this year and have caused them to play many games short-handed.

Senior running back Curtis Shaw remains out with a PCL sprain, sophomore wide receiver Morris Norrise missed last week’s game with an injured shoulder, senior Deadder is still out with a foot injury, and sophomore Osagie Odiase missed last week’s game as well.

Fleming missed his second straight game last week and is questionable for this week’s game.

“It’s kind of a weird injury,” Fleming said. “It’s the right calf and knee. It’s really nagging and sometimes it hurts more than others and stiffens up on me a little bit. I’m feeling a little better now so we’ll just see how it goes this week during practice.”

Last week against Northern Arizona University, freshman quarterback Garrett Safron threw for 130 yards and his first two touchdowns of his career filling in as one of the backup quarterbacks for Fleming.

“It was exciting to go out there and show my arm strength,” Safron said. “It’s kind of hidden right now but it will be shown. It was definitely fun just letting the ball fly.”

For the Vikings (5-3, 3-2), they are a rush-first team and average a Big Sky-leading 279 yards on the ground per game, while averaging a Big Sky-low 156.1 yards passing per game.

The Vikings did suffer a huge setback after McCaffrey injured his leg two weeks ago in the University of Montana game, which they lost 30-24.

McCaffrey was not able to play last week and his status for this game is uncertain.

McCaffrey has been the focal point of the offense for the Vikings this year after running for 697 yards and 13 touchdowns in just five games. He has two 200-yard rushing games this season – one against Northern Arizona University and one against Idaho State University.

Filling in for McCaffrey at running back is freshman Shaquille Richard, who ran for 58 yards and two rushing touchdowns last game verses Eastern Washington University.

Senior quarterback Connor Kavanaugh threw for 154 yards rushing and 147 yards passing with one passing touchdown in last weeks game.

Between Kavanaugh and Richard, the two are filling in nicely for injured McCaffrey.

This will be the 31st meeting between the two teams and the Vikings lead the series 21-9.

At Jeld-Wen Field, the Hornets are 3-12 but won their last game there 31-14 in 2009.

Kickoff will be at 6:05 p.m. and the game can be heard on Classic 93.1 FM or KAHI 950 AM.

Josh Stanley can be reached at [email protected].