UH football poised to regain some of the magic of 1999
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
Quietly, without fanfare, the University of Hawai'i football team lurks.
(Consensus look at how college football magazines see the WAC). 1. Fresno State 2. Texas-El Paso 3. Hawai'i 4. San Jose State 5. Boise State 6. Tulsa 7. Rice 8. SMU 9. Louisiana Tech 10. Nevada College Preview: 1. Fresno State 4. Hawai'i FB Action: 1. Fresno State 6. Hawai'i Sporting News: 1. Fresno State 5. Hawai'i Athlon: 1. Fresno State 5. Hawai'i Lindy's Football: 1. Fresno State 4. Hawai'i Steele's College Football Preview: 1. Fresno State 2. Hawai'i
Somewhere between the blue-chip recruiting ads and five-star lock sportsbook touts in this year's college football magazines, the Warriors lie in furtive wait.
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WAC crystal ball
For the most part, you'll find them wedged in the middle of the section devoted to the Western Athletic Conference. In the new-look, 10-team WAC, they are neither as highly regarded as everybody's top picks, Fresno State and Texas-El Paso, nor written off as bargain-basement cheap as Nevada and Louisiana Tech.
There are hints at what the Warriors might be capable of — Athlon rates UH's receivers as the best in the conference and The Sporting News projects an Oct. 27 win over Fresno State as the "upset of the year" in the WAC — but, for the most part, the Warriors are consigned to an unprepossessing season.
Pretty much what you would expect from a team coming off a 3-9 (sixth-place WAC) season with some looming question marks. And not an altogether bad place to be one season removed from the bulls-eye that had accompanied the Warriors after the 9-4 wonder year of 1999.
In fact, the more you look at it between the lines of the preseason publications, this might be the ideal hiding place. Depending on how they have filled the pukas from last year, this is perhaps the perfect spot from which to spring the trap door on the WAC again.
For it is an unsuspecting landscape that awaits them. Among the six magazines either currently on local newsstands or due out this month, only Phil Steele's College Football Preview predicts the Warriors will finish higher than fourth place and contend for a championship.
"I've got them as the 10th most improved team in the country," says Steele, who sees UH finishing second in the WAC. "I like their quarterback — we had (Tim) Chang ranked high coming out of high school — and their schedule."
If the Warriors hold up their end, the nine-game home schedule has the potential to do a lot for them.
There are only three road games and two of them, Nevada and Southern Methodist, are against teams UH beat last season.
The consensus top two teams, Fresno State and Texas-El Paso, who curiously don't play each other in the two-year conference scheduling rotation, must play at Aloha Stadium.
And the toughest non-conference opponents, Air Force and Brigham Young, don't arrive until after Thanksgiving.
In the WAC, where injuries and roster depth often affect the race, Fresno State has Colorado, Oregon State, Wisconsin and Colorado State all before coming here. UTEP arrives the week after playing at Alabama, and Rice shows up a game — sandwiched around an open date — after appearing in Lincoln, Neb. Meanwhile, UH plays its best non-conference opposition after the conclusion of the WAC season.
"Right now, we just need to worry about ourselves," said UH assistant coach Ron Lee. "If we do what we have to do, things will work out no matter whether we're picked on top or not."
In the shadow of the preseason favorites, the Warriors lurk.
