HARRISONBURG — Third-year Rhode Island coach Jim Fleming understands the challenge his team has today at Bridgeforth Stadium.

The Rams (1-7, 0-5) haven’t won since the first of the month and meet a well-rested No. 8 James Madison (6-1, 4-0) squad coming off its bye week for homecoming. Rhode Island doesn’t get its off week until after the Colonial Athletic Association contest in Harrisonburg.

The Dukes, led by first-year coach Mike Houston, are third in FCS and top the CAA for rushing, averaging 316 yards per game on the ground. Rhode Island has the worst rushing defense in the league, yielding an average of over 218 yards per game.

“The run-game numbers are sick. They’re great,” Fleming said of Madison’s offense. “They’re really a tough out for us, so we’ll have to play extremely well to win the game.”

Rhode Island’s defense has given up at least 200 rushing yards in each of its last three games.

JMU senior running back Khalid Abdullah sits in the top five nationally for every major individual rushing category — yards, yards per game, yards per carry and touchdowns.

He spent his bye week resting up to get re-energized for the final four regular-season games of his college career. He said he’s as close to 100 percent as he’s been all year.

Despite feeling fresh, Abdullah said JMU would take Rhode Island seriously and not look ahead to next week’s rivalry game at Richmond — one with major CAA championship implications.

Rhode Island gave up only three touchdowns in its loss last week against Maine, and two weeks ago blanked Stony Brook for three quarters before falling to the Seawolves 14-3.

“They’re definitely improving and they have a hard-nose defense,” Abdullah said. “It’ll come in time for them and it’ll be a tough defense to play against. It’ll be a tough game.”

Houston said Rhode Island’s improvement coincides with its change at quarterback.

Fleming turned his offense over to redshirt freshman Jordan Vazzano a couple of weeks ago. Vazzano threw for 347 yards and two touchdowns in the loss to Maine.

“Rhode Island started off struggling at the beginning of the year and they made a quarterback change,” Houston said. “They have been a vastly improved team since then.

“The biggest thing we talked about during the bye week was splitting the regular season into two halves. We finished the first half and put ourselves in a very good position. We looked at everything last week to prepare us for a real push in the last four weeks, but everything starts with the game against Rhode Island.”

Currently, JMU is tied atop the CAA standings with Stony Brook, but Richmond, Villanova, New Hampshire and Maine are only a loss behind. With a win over the Rams, JMU heads to Richmond with a chance to extend its CAA lead to two games ahead of the Spiders.

In order to knock off Rhode Island, Houston said JMU must put pressure on Vazzano.

Madison’s defense has registered 11 sacks in the four conference games this season.

Even though Vazzano threw for more than 300 yards and the two scores against Maine, he also turned the ball over five times.

JMU wants to force him into more bad throws.

“We want to get him moving and running out of the pocket,” Houston said. “We need to get some hits on him and put them in some negative-yardage situations to generate sacks. That’ll be the key to us defending in the passing game.”

Kickoff at Bridgeforth Stadium is set for 3:30 p.m.