Notes:
For my purposes only…..if this helps you cap the game by either riding or fading me, great.
Non lined Northern Colorado game, not much could be gathered from that game. Watching Hawaii’s Green –White intrasquad scrimmage would be more competitive and exciting.
Brennan and the First Team came out and scored 42 by the half. Brennan looked perfect going 34-40 (2 drops) for 416 yards and 6 TDs.
The first team defense didn’t let Northern Colorado get past their own 40 yard line.
Hawaii demonstrated their depth and team speed when backup receivers returned a 80 yard punt and our stud 4.3 40 Florida Sophomore wideout blazed a 100 yard kickoff return in response to NC’s only score.
Impressive? Not at all. Don’t be fooled, Northern Colorado played 44 Freshmen and Sophomores. NC would be an average D-III team or maybe a decent JUCO team.
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- Louisiana Tech (3-10) came to Hawaii (11-3) last year and lost 61-17. It was relatively close at the half (26-10) until Hawaii had a 28 point third quarter. La Tech’s 10 losses were by an average of 34 points. They did however, beat powerhouses Nicholls State, Utah State and North Texas.
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- I cannot stress enough how good Hawaii’s defense will be this year with our new (previous) Defensive Coordinator McMackin. When McMackin teamed up with June Jones in 1998, Hawaii made the biggest turnaround in NCAA history going from 0-12 to 9-4 and ranked 35th in Defense. This is the same guy who shut down Chad Johnson and TJ Houshmandzadeh in the Bowl Game.
Although Hawaii sent 3 defensive players to the NFL this year, Hawaii still returns 21 of 25 of their leading tacklers, 8 defensive linemen with 3 or more starts, the entire LB corp, two returning starting CB’s, a JC All-American and 4 Star Rivals Texas CB Ryan Mouton, and Texan and soon to be All-WAC Safety Jacob Patek.
I got a bad feeling that Hawaii’s young offensive line will be exposed when we play a real team this season, and it will be Hawaii’s defense that saves us. I guarantee that the days of Hawaii ranked 90+ in Defense are over….We will see Hawaii ranked under 60 this year……even with an offense that scores every 3 minutes and is on the field the majority of games.