FOXBOROROUGH, Mass. (AP) – Justise Hairston picked a perfect time to play a near-perfect college football game.

Hairston rushed for a school-record 332 yards to lead Division 1-AA Central Connecticut State to a homecoming weekend win over St. Francis, Pa., in October. Scott Pioli, the New England Patriots’ vice president of player personnel, happened to be in attendance that day.

Hairston and Pioli, a former Central Connecticut defensive tackle and a member of the school’s Hall of Fame, were reunited last month when the Patriots drafted Hairston with one of their three sixth-round picks.

“I hope he took some interest in me” because of that performance, Hairston said Saturday at the Patriots’ rookie minicamp. “I didn’t even catch on until the end of the game, when everybody made a big deal of it. It was exciting afterward to hear that Scott Pioli of the Patriots was here, but he wasn’t there to see me.”

Nevertheless, Pioli saw a stellar individual effort. Hairston, a transfer from Rutgers, rushed for 197 yards and two touchdowns on runs of 62 and 70 yards – in the first quarter alone. He had five touchdowns in all.

“I scored on the first play. I came back and scored on the second play and then my fourth carry went for about 60 yards,” Hairston said. “I racked up yards pretty quick. It was a fairly easy game.”

In his only season at the 1-AA level, Hairston made everything look easy by rushing for 1,847 yards and 20 touchdowns. He finished eighth in the voting for the Walter Payton Award, given to the nation’s top 1-AA player. Now, he has to prove he can match some of that success in the NFL.

“I think you’d like to see a player at the lower levels be a pretty significant player,” coach Bill Belichick said about projecting 1-AA success to the pros. “When you’re watching him play, you’d like to, at the end of the game, feel like, ‘That guy really should be playing at a higher level.”‘ Hairston is 6-1, 210 pounds. He originally made a splash in the Big East in 2003, rushing for 550 yards and eight touchdowns as a Rutgers freshman. After he was sidelined by a knee injury, he lost his spot, first to Brian Leonard, a second-round pick of the Rams this season, and later to Ray Rice.

Last season Hairston transferred to Central Connecticut, in his hometown of New Britain. He said the move “revitalized” him. Now he’s a contender to back up Laurence Maroney, the Patriots’ first-round pick in 2006.

In March, the Patriots released running back Corey Dillon, one of the heroes of their 2004 Super Bowl season. Hairston will compete for playing time with free agent Sammy Morris and returning veterans Kevin Faulk and Heath Evans.

“You expect it to kick up a notch, as it is when you jump up from Pop Warner to high school, high school to college,” Hairston said. “You’re talking about the best athletes in the country in the NFL.”