When players make their way across the line of scrimmage against St. Louis Catholic, they will likely end up in a collision with the senior duo of Graham Montet and Kade Nugent.

The pair had breakout seasons in 2022 and are continuing that success after helping the Saints shut out Crowley last week.

“Those two guys are two of the best human beings on our team, and they are the leaders,” St. Louis head coach Brock Matherne said. “What they do, people follow. They go hard every single play. You won’t catch them on film taking a play off. That stuff carries over to the rest of our team.

“As the leaders and great human beings that they are, they don’t know the impact that they have on the rest of our team when they play like that every single down. What you see Friday night and Thursday night from those guys you see all week at practice.”

Montet, a linebacker who made 157 tackles in 2022, opened the season with 13 tackles, a forced fumble, two blocked kicks and two tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

“I think the No. 1 thing for him is the want to,” Matherne said. “He wants to be a leader. He wants to do right, and he really wants to be the best.

“He takes extreme pride in the fact that he had 157 tackles last year, and he is still one of the most underrated players, I believe, in the state of Louisiana. He wears that as a chip on his shoulder. I just love the mind-set that Montet brings every single day.”

With 279 career tackles, Montet is nearing the school record of 330 (Collin Todd, 2008-2010).

Nugent anchors the line. He racked up 23 tackles for a loss as a junior and 81 total tackles. He made eight tackles last week with a sack and fumble recovery.

“The thing about Kade is he is what I call ‘an oilfield worker,’” Matherne said. “He shows up, puts his hard hat on, has his lunch box in his hand, clocks in and gets to work. He doesn’t complain. He has the hunger to learn. We love having him at St. Louis.”

They lead a veteran defensive unit that will face a tough task this week in Iota, which knocked off 2022 non-select Division II semifinalist Iowa last week 21-14.

“They beat a very quality opponent in Iowa, who was the top dog in the area last year,” Matherne said. “Like I always tell my kids, every year it is a new team. What happened in the past is the past.

“We are not so much worried about what they did against Iowa. We want our guys to keep being our guys. If they are going to beat us, we want them to earn it. We don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot and make mistakes where we look back and beat ourselves.”

Iota has a big-play running back in Jacob Cormier with whom the Saints should be familiar. Cormier ran for 305 yards and three touchdowns in a 32-30 win over the Saints in 2021. The teams will return to Matt Walker Memorial Stadium in Sulphur at 7 p.m. today. St. Louis won 14-11 last year in Iota.

“I think the number one goal for us versus any team is to be able to stop the interior run,” Matherne said. “They have a really good running back on offense.

“The quarterback (Peyton Renfro) and running back (Cormier) are really good. They are a spread-style offense. They will run some gap schemes. The running back is one of the fastest running backs we will see all year. He broke a couple of long runs versus Iowa. The quarterback seems like he can put the ball in any spot he wants.

“It will be a big key for us to stop the run early and for passes and generate some pass rush on third-and-longs. I really think we will have to get them in those situations if we are going to have some success.”