Hampden-Sydney College’s (H-SC) football team stumbled in its 2018 opener, falling 33-14 to host Averett University on Sunday, but Tigers Head Coach Marty Favret expressed confidence in his team and hope for a big turnaround this weekend.

He noted that the loss to the Cougars was disappointing.

“Clearly the conditions affected us more than I thought they would in the hottest game we ever played in,” he said.

He said he didn’t think the Tigers were themselves, allowing five turnovers, including one on special teams, and giving up more than 300 yards on defense.

“I think we lost to a good team, but we’ll certainly have to dramatically improve if we want to reach our goals,” Favret said.

And those goals, he said, are lofty as usual, with the Old Dominion Athletic Conference title in mind.

“I like to think we’re going to be in the hunt in November,” he said. “(We’ve) got a senior quarterback that I think is special.”

He was referring to Alec Cobb, who is in his third year as H-SC’s primary quarterback.

“We’re young on offense, a lot of sophomores, but they’re good players,” Favret said. “They need to kind of be baptized a little bit. And defensively, we’ve got seven or eight starters back — it should be a strength of ours. Frankly, I’ll know a lot more after we play (Christopher Newport University) Saturday, but league play starts in about three weeks, and that’s when we’re really going to find out how good we are.”

The Tigers (0-1) host the Captains (1-0) on Saturday at 1 p.m.