Kenny Carter

DOVER — Morgan State coach Lee Hull looks at Delaware State’s football team and sees a familiar situation.

Just last season, Hull was in Kenny Carter’s shoes — with his first head-coaching job and low expectations.

All Hull did with that was win a MidEastern Athletic Conference championship in his debut season and guide the Bears to the FCS playoffs.

While that is an incredibly lofty goal for the Hornets at the moment, especially considering they haven’t won a game yet this year, Hull says he likes the job Carter has done so far.

Hull will get more acquainted with Carter on Saturday as the Hornets (0-3) will welcome the defending conference champions to Alumni Stadium at 2 p.m. for DelState’s MEAC opener. Morgan State is 1-0 in conference play and 1-2 overall.

“He’s in a situation like I was last year,” said Hull of Carter during the MEAC coaches’ conference call with media members on Tuesday.

“They’re still trying to find their identity, still trying to get the players to buy into his system, his theories and his vision for the program. But you can tell on film they are improving every week.”

The similarities between Morgan State’s 2014 team and this year’s version of the Hornets don’t just stop at the coaches.

Neither was predicted to do much in the MEAC. The Bears were picked last of teams with postseason eligibility in the preseason MEAC Coaches’ Poll last season, but overcame that to win the conference for the first time since 1971. This season, DelState was picked last in the preseason poll.

The Hornets would like to make a splash in Carter’s first MEAC game, and have had two weeks to prepare for this one thanks to a bye a week ago.

“Getting back to fundamentals and technique is what we needed to do,” Carter said of how the Hornets used the open week. “We needed to focus on us.

... When you’re trying to build a program and get it back where it needs to be, that’s really where the foundation should be.”

The last time these two teams met, it did not go so well for DelState.

With the MEAC title on the line for Morgan State and the Hornets with nothing to play for, the Bears blew out DelState 69-7 in the season finale.

The Bears completely dominated, out-gaining the Hornets in total yardage 529-to-177.

Hull doesn’t think it’ll be as easy for Morgan State this time around.

“They’ll remember that game and be coming in looking for us,” Hull said.

The Hornets need to improve from their first three games, which has them holding losses to an FBS team (Kent State), an FCS team (Liberty) and a Division II team (Chowan).

“We feel like some of the adjustments that we were able to make during the open week will give us a shot to do what we need to do to be competitive,” Carter said.

Hull pointed out that the bye week can only help the Hornets.

“It gives them a little bit of an advantage,” Hull said.

“They had two weeks to prepare for us. They had a bye, they got some rest. I know coach Carter is a great coach, and he’ll have those guys ready. He’ll have a nice game plan for us. We have one week, but we have to prepare for them, and we’ll put our best game plan together and go out and play the game.”