By Chad Roberts
Special to www.ncataggies.com
 

GREENSBORO -- Hampton head coach Don Rose predicted the change in the days leading up to Saturday’s Hampton-North Carolina A&T football clash.

“It is no longer as it once was; when you travel to play North Carolina A&T, you have to be ready to play,” Rose said in a Hampton press release early in the week.

Saturday’s 24-14 win, though Hampton’s sixth straight in the series, could mark a shift in recent Pirates vs. Aggies history. Unlike some of the previous contests, the 2009 clash was competitive throughout. From 2006-08, Hampton outscored the Aggies 151-35. The Pirates’ average margin of victory in those three games was 38 points.

Rose, having worked alongside N.C. A&T head coach Alonzo Lee on the Hampton staff in the late 90’s, said he didn’t expect to run wild on a Lee-coached team. “I knew that wasn’t going to happen,” Rose said when asked about Hampton’s recent string of blowout victories over the Aggies. “I knew it was going to be hard to run on those guys.”

N.C. A&T held the Pirates to 125 net yards rushing Saturday. Hampton averaged 248 yards on the ground in the three previous games. And unlike the recent contests, the 2009 game wasn’t decided until the fourth quarter.

Lee remained upbeat after the game, and said miscues and mistakes that cost the young Aggies football team would be corrected. “If the ball touches your hands … you’re supposed to catch the ball. That’s what playmakers do,” Lee said.

Still, the defeat was much different from the most recent HU-A&T games, when the Pirates averaged 50 points per game and 400-plus yards of total offense.

The Aggies defense is proving to be much stingier in 2009, holding the Pirates to a more modest 333 yards of total offense. And 85 of those yards came on two long touchdown passes.

Rose, the Hampton coach, said he felt fortunate to get out of Greensboro with the win.  He had seen what A&T had done in its two previous games, holding Winston-Salem State and Norfolk State both to less than 14 points. “They were shutting folks down,” Rose said.

Lee said the lessons learned from the loss would only serve to make the young Aggies football team better. There are only 18 juniors and seniors on the roster. The rest of the team is made up of freshmen and sophomores.

“If we continue to work hard and do the things we need to do, we’re going to be a championship team,” Lee said. “We’re only going to get better.”