HAMPTON, VA (WTKR)- It's been a season of firsts for Hampton football since moving to the CAA. On Saturday the Pirates take their home field for yet another one.
Hampton's home game against Maine will mark the program's first conference contest at Armstrong Stadium since joining the league during the offseason. It will come two weeks after the Pirates played their inaugural CAA opener at Delaware, a 35-3 loss on the Blue Hens' home field, HU's first setback of the campaign. Despite the loss, head coach Robert Prunty felt that his team showed it belongs in the league.
"That's what our players see now- we can play at the CAA level," Prunty said. "It was a big unknown and now we played Delaware and I thought the first half we played well. We saw that we could stick with them."
"We just want to get better," added senior defensive end Keshaun Moore. "We know that a lot of teams are going to kind of look over us and kind of just be like 'oh, that should be an easy game,' but that's OK. We're not worried about it. We just focus on what we do."
The Pirates fell to 3-1 on the season after the loss, but are coming off their bye week, giving them a chance to get some extra rest and work on some things that went wrong in Newark.
"I think the guys kind of locked in and refocused again," noted Moore. "We're looking at it as the second half of the season now. The rest of our games are conference games, so I think it gave everyone time to kind of get back to some fundamentals, kind of just hone in on our skills and get better."
Maine comes in with an 0-4 record, but has faced New Mexico, Boston College and CAA preseason favorite Villanova so far. Prunty believes the Black Bears are probably better than their record indicates.
"They've played three tough opponents," he pointed out. "This is the most dangerous 0-4 team that we're probably going to face."
As for the players, they're looking forward to the chance to open their home conference schedule with a victory.
"It'll be the first one played at Hampton so I think the guys are hype and pretty excited about it," Moore said. "I'm looking forward to it. It'll be another game back at home with our crowd, so definitely looking forward to the game."
Hampton and Maine kickoff at 2:00 on Saturday at Armstrong Stadium.
