Posted on: Sunday, November 23, 2003

It took a while, but UH gets Christmas wish

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Now, that really wasn't so tough, was it? Eleven games — and not a few anxious moments as well — into this season, the University of Hawai'i football team last night got around to taking care of what everybody had been expecting to be a perfunctory exercise: a Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl invitation.

For the record, it was finally accomplished with a 59-28 victory over the U. S. Military Academy. The win — the Warriors' seventh against four losses — punched UH's ticket to the Christmas Day game.

What took the Warriors so long to clinch the invitation is another question.

"Hey, I'm just glad we took care of it tonight," said an obviously relieved athletic director Herman Frazier after UH's tardiest clinching of the four bowls the school has had since the adoption of the bowl-eligible seven-win requirement.

"I'd like to have taken care of business (sooner) and won a couple of road games," head coach June Jones said.

Indeed, losses at Nevada-Las Vegas, Tulsa and, last week, Nevada, prolonged the wait to the danger point for a team that still has Alabama and Boise State lurking on the regular season schedule. To have been forced to wait any longer would have been to risk blowing one of the sweetheart deals in all of college football and Santa wasn't going to wait forever.

But after unintentionally building up the drama over previous weeks there was little to be found last night at Aloha Stadium.

After sending bowl committee folks to Reno and back for nothing last week, this time the Warriors were ready and able to accept an invitation early on. This game was over about as fast as you could say "bowl eligible" in a 17-0 steamroller job of a first quarter that set the stage for a record 741 yards of total offense and an early emptying of the UH bench.

The only real question before the assembled 35,370 was whether a third-quarter semi-streaker would be apprehended by police in his end zone-to-end zone dash.

He was, but not before bounding over the South end zone corner fence just ahead of the long arm of the law.

That escape gave him a lot in common with UH slotback Chad Owens, who, with a school-record 14 pass receptions for 168 yards and a touchdown, wasn't easily snared, either.

You can take your choice on whether it was being home again for the first time in nearly a month or the opposition they found when they got there that helped get the Warriors over the bowl-game hump. It looked like a lot of both.

For there's apparently nothing like a lot of friendly faces — or an 0-11 team on the way to an NCAA record 0-13 — to provide inspiration for a team in need.

But the urgency of the situation brought out a focus we haven't seen since the Oct. 11 Fresno State game, too. It helped revive an offense that had been missing since, well, the last time it was home, Oct. 25, against Texas-El Paso.

"We wanted to take care of business now that we were home again," said right guard Uriah Moenoa. "How hard we had to work just makes it sweeter."

Isn't that the way it is with Christmas tales?

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.