WAC football an apt description
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
Is there a certified public accountant in the house? They sure could have used the services of one last night at Aloha Stadium, where totaling up the stats and records threatened to last long into the morning and beyond.
But when the University of Hawai'i football team said nothing would keep it from a winning season this year, the Warriors apparently meant it in a score-'til-they-drop 52-51 victory over Miami (Ohio).
And nothing did stand in the way of the now 7-3 Warriors, whose second winning season in nine years was accomplished despite a passing interest in defense and an opponent that matched it score-for-score until Justin Ayat's 24-yard field goal as time expired.
Even if it took 500 yards passing from a "slow" starting Nick Rolovich at quarterback, 10 Justin Colbert catches and 211 yards in receiving by Ashley Lelie.
On this night, neither the RedHawks' point-a-minute, no-huddle offense nor their Houdini-like freshman quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, was enough to deny the Warriors' reaching bowl eligibility.
Whether it actually lands them in a bowl, however, is not certain.
But that hurdle was lost in the wonder of the moment on a night when 1,161 yards were piled up and the teams combined for a UH-record 106 passing attempts — 70 completions in a 3-hour, 49-minute shootout that was the second longest regulation UH home game in history.
"Welcome to WAC football," said Miami coach Terry Hoeppner, without an apparent sense of envy of a game that ended at 2:57 a.m. in Oxford, Ohio..
Actually, it looked more like ArenaBall gone outdoors. A fastbreak basketball game played on AstroTurf.
"It was a game everybody will remember that was here," said UH coach June Jones.
Indeed, the smallest Aloha Stadium crowd of the season — 29,073 — spent much of the fourth quarter on its feet, and it wasn't to get a headstart for the exits.
If you blinked in this game, you could miss a score. Three Rolovich-directed UH scoring drives — if you stretch the definition, that is — required less than a minute. Overall, six drives, including the decisive march that took just 1 minute, 8 seconds, required 2 minutes or less.
It took the Warriors deep into their playbook, including five-receiver sets and, on a couple of occasions, even a wide receiver (Colbert) at quarterback.
All in all, hard to believe that in its television preview of weekend games the Los Angeles Times gave this one a one-star ranking and offered, "may we suggest a dinner and a movie (instead)?"
