Posted on: Sunday, September 14, 2003
Warriors fail to show up vs. USC on big stage
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
LOS ANGELES — Early in the first quarter of yesterday's nonconference football game at the Memorial Coliseum, the Pac-10 officiating crew announced over the public address system, "(University of) Arizona, time out."
The problem was it was supposed to be the University of Hawai'i playing No. 4-ranked Southern California.
But, then, the Warrior team we had expected to see never showed up, either.
Whoever it was that took the 61-32 beating from the Trojans, it wasn't the UH team that had left Hawai'i intent upon making a name for itself. It wasn't the veteran team that had been itching for a shot at a national power or the one we thought might make a four-quarter game of it.
Instead, it was somebody that gave up, in one stretch overlapping the second and third quarters, 42 consecutive points en route to the most points by a UH opponent since, well, the last meeting with USC (62-7) in 1999.
Hardly the statement of progress we had all hoped for after four years.
The Warriors came in as three-touchdown underdogs and, on a hot, hazy day, figured to get worn down by the Trojans' speed, depth and ability sooner or later. But who figured it would be second-quarter soon or in an avalanche of points?
Indeed, even the Trojans, almost to a man, said they had come to work expecting a tighter, tougher struggle.
"To be honest," said quarterback Matt Leinart, who watched from the bench as two of his backups finished the game, "this wasn't how we thought it would go."
"I thought we'd be up to our necks in it," said USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow, whose two true freshmen running backs, Reggie Bush and LenDale White, stole the show by bouncing off and running around the UH defense for four touchdowns.
Maybe it was the second-largest crowd, 73,654, ever to see UH play. Or, perhaps it was the aura of playing the Trojans and all the history that surrounds them in their fabled home.
At one point, after USC just scored a second-quarter touchdown, free safety Leonard Peters spied Trojan alum and former Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Allen on the home sideline and went over to make his acquaintance.
For USC, which has won 11 games in a row, yesterday everybody in a cardinal and gold looked like somebody.
As bad a day as the Warriors had, however, they weren't alone. The officials blew more than team recognition, botching badly two play calls, one a first-quarter pass interference penalty they were notified to be on the lookout for, and the other, a second-quarter UH fumble that shouldn't have been.
Those, in and of themselves, didn't come close to costing UH the game. But what the Warriors did afterward compounded the situation by letting the game get away from them in a 28-point USC second quarter. That's where tackling was among the fundamentals to desert the Warriors.
It was where the Warriors lost their focus, their drive and, because nobody survives for along committing those sins against this USC team, ultimately the game.
Mercifully, perhaps, Fox Sports Net, which was showing the game to a national cable audience, missed a couple of second-quarter scores with transmission problems.
As the Warriors' luck would have it on this day, Fox made it back in time to show the final five USC touchdowns and a safety.
Pity they, too, couldn't have blamed it on Arizona.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
