Hampton is a program on the move transitioning from the MEAC to the Big South, and now to the CAA this season. Unfortunately, they are going to be very overmatched in this inaugural CAA season. They were ranked #322 last year in NET and lost their leading scorer and rebounder in Najee Garvin who Dooley tried to recruit to ECU.
In the preseason Torvik projected this version of Hampton 337th. They do return a senior player that averaged 15ppg 4rpg 4apg. They also landed a nice transfer from St. Louis that averaged 8.2ppg 4.3rpg 34% from 3 and started 33 games on an NIT team. It didn't seem to help much taking a brutal beatdown from James Madison in their first game 58-106 on the road. James Madison isn't Kentucky so that's a score that really stands out in a bad way.
These are the players Hampton started in their only D1 game so far this season vs JMU and their stats in that game.
Starters
Bench
Nesbitt is the player that started on that NIT Saint Louis team, he also started his career at Memphis before that. He's a good player and you would expect would play much better vs ECU. Russell Dean is the returning Hampton player that averaged 15ppg, 4, and 4. However he wasn't very efficient. They start a pretty big lineup but beyond those two players, there really isn't a lot else that is intimidating on this team. This should be an easy ECU win at home. Last year even as terrible as Hampton was they did have a pretty decent defense a #152 in defensive rating. It was their offense that failed them miserably. If the Pirates have any troubles in this game I expect it comes from their ability to score as Hampton still returns some of the key contributors from that team. This is a game I had ECU predicted to win this summer and I'm expecting an even easier win after what JMU did to the other pirates.
