Defense helps Warriors make it through the night
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
WAILUKU, Maui — The intervening months had not been kind to the University of Hawai'i football team's defense.
"Kind" being a relative term here for a group that lived with most of the harsh stigma and sour whispers from last year's disappointing 3-9 campaign.
For them, time had moved with all the swiftness of a lumbering 380-pound offensive tackle on bad knees.
"I didn't know nine months could pass so slow," sighed Kevin Lempa, the Warriors' defensive coordinator. "It has been a loooong time. I thought this season would never get here."
So when it did, there was an earnest vow to make something of it. There was a straight-from-the-heart commitment to change the team's fortunes and, in the process, recast their own image.
There was, as middle linebacker Chris Brown, who could have been the valedictorian for the unit, put it, a resolve "to show that the defense is somebody."
Somebody worth keeping an eye on it would seem from last night's 30-12 season-opening victory over Montana.
Somebody the Warriors will need if they are to go anywhere this season.
A lot of somebodies, really, on a night when linebacker Pisa Tinoisamoa emerged as the dominating force he has been counted on to be with five tackles for loss, including three sacks. When free safety Nate Jackson hit ball carriers so hard it could be felt from here to his native Wai'anae.
While it is dangerous to read too much into one game, especially an opener against a Division I-AA opponent, it was the most hopeful sign in more than a year for this defense.
In the fresh setting of War Memorial Stadium, the defense turned, at least for one night, a new page. Mixing its schemes and its personnel — "we must have played over 20 different guys," Lempa said — the Warriors shut down what has been a potent Grizzlie offense.
Until well into the fourth quarter, it held Montana without a touchdown and managed it despite three turnovers by the UH offense. They forced three turnovers and made the big plays on third down. All points of pride for a unit that had been 99th in scoring defense among 110 teams last season.
"They did a helluva job to hold them to 12 points," quarterback Tim Chang said by way of personal testimony. "They did the dirty work ... when I turned it over three times," Chang acknowledged.
More than that, the defense kept the Warriors in this one, holding Montana to but two field goals, until the offense found a semblance of rhythm and eventually the end zone in a 20-point second quarter.
"I told the guys that it was up to us to show what we could do," Lempa said. "We talked about this being a new season and how this was a chance to show what we could do after so many people had come to doubt us."
In putting the Warriors in the win column for the first time on opening night in head coach June Jones' three-year reign, the defense also took a big step toward relieving the burden of last season.
