After their latest loss, a 38-14 thumping at Eastern Washington last week, the Idaho Vandals began to sound like a team whose season had gotten away from it a bit — but determined to make the best of it in the three games remaining.

“I think every week you find any little thing you can to motivate,” Idaho coach Paul Petrino said Tuesday, at his weekly meeting with area media. “I think the biggest thing this week is about ourselves. We’ve got to get back practicing hard, like we did the previous two weeks, have a great week of practice, execute and go out and play as hard as we can.”

Idaho (3-5, 2-4 Big Sky) plays host to North Dakota (5-3) on Saturday at the Kibbie Dome. North Dakota, a Big Sky member last year, is an FCS independent this year, but is playing mostly playing Big Sky teams. This game counts as a league game for Idaho, which was picked to finish in the top third of the 13-team league — meaning, a team expected to challenge for an FCS playoff berth.

“Even though we haven’t had the year we’ve expected, or wanted to have, and obviously it hurts really bad, getting to go out and playing with the guys I love, nothing beats that,” Idaho senior linebacker/tight end Kaden Elliss said.

North Dakota, in the hunt for an at-large bid to the 24-team FCS playoffs, is ranked 25th in the STATS FCS media poll and receiving votes in the coaches poll.

Despite Idaho’s 24-23 loss at Montana State three weeks ago, Petrino was pleased with the effort. The Vandals followed that up the following week by handling Southern Utah 31-12. That made Idaho 3-0 at home, with two home games remaining — the Vandals host Montana on Nov. 10 before finishing the following week at Florida.

“It’s about going out and having pride, and finding a way,” Petrino said. “Right now, we’re undefeated at home. It would be a great thing for those seniors, to leave knowing they won every game at home their senior year.

“We’ll find guys that are passionate to play, and those are the guys we will play with this weekend.”

Since the start of the 2015 season, Idaho is 12-8 at home, 7-17 on the road.

This year, Idaho’s home wins have come over Western New Mexico (56-10), Portland State (20-7) and Southern Utah.

“Our fans have been awesome this year; the atmosphere has been really really awesome in the Dome this year,” Elliss said.