Sacramento State’s defensive backs will have their hands full this Saturday when the Hornets travel to Idaho State University for their first conference road game of the season.

The Bengals currently rank No. 1 in the Big Sky with 355 passing yards per game.

Transfer quarterback Kevin Yost started all 11 games last season and finished with 2,973 passing yards. This year, the senior has already thrown for 926 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions.

“You’ve got to stop them from throwing the ball,” said Sac State head coach Marshall Sperbeck. “It’s going to be our biggest challenge.”

The Hornets rank 10th in Big Sky in pass defense allowing 257 yards per game, but have come away with four interceptions.

Senior corner back Osagie Odiase leads the Hornets in takeaways, catching an interception and recovering a fumble two weeks ago against Northern Colorado.

Sperbeck said the defense has watched plenty of film this week to prepare for Idaho State’s air attack.

The Bengals finished 2-9 last season with wins against Western State College and Northern Colorado. They would lose seven straight games after that.

Despite only having one win in Idaho State’s last nine games, Sperbeck said it is an improved team.

“I think having a year with their new offense under their belt has helped them,” Sperbeck said.

Last week, Idaho State lost to the University of Nebraska, 73-7. It was the most points given up in more than 10 years.

“It was an eye-popping experience,” said Bengals’ head coach Mike Kramer. “I have never seen a Big Ten team with that much speed. We are anxious to return to our level of competition and hopefully we don’t have to see that speed ever again.”

Although Kramer is only in his second year at Idaho State, he is not new to the Big Sky. Previously, he coached at Eastern Washington University and Montana State.

The Hornets will look to put last week’s game behind them as they finished with a season-high three turnovers in the 35-13 loss to North Dakota.

“We have to manage the football,” Sperbeck said. “We had a couple of opportunities last week in the red zone that we didn’t capitalize on. We need to regroup and get back on track.”

With the season already a third of the way over, Sac State quarterback Garrett Safron said he will not be looking at any standings or the upcoming schedule. His focus is on Idaho State.

“We are going to take it one play at a time and one game at a time,” Safron said. “We have a good game plan going in and we will do some great things out there.”

Kickoff will be at 12:30 p.m. and can be seen on bigskytv.org.

Ryan Kuhn can be reached at @rskuhn