Posted on: Saturday, September 20, 2003

Warriors handed the Rebels this victory

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

LAS VEGAS — How do you make a nine-day road trip seem even longer?

You do what the University of Hawai'i football team has done:

You come home on your charter flight this morning not only empty-handed at 0-2, but with considerably more questions then you left with.

After last night's 33-22 loss to Nevada-Las Vegas at Sam Boyd Stadium — and be assured it could have been worse — these Warriors need some answers and they need them soon.

Just three games, hardly one quarter of the season, into the schedule there is already an urgency for these Warriors to turn things around and get it right.

For not only are they 1-2, they're regressing before our eyes, becoming something we never imagined. Not now, not this season.

Turnovers are piling up like the national debt, penalties are mounting, and promising scoring opportunities are being dismissed like so many telemarketers.

Two turnovers, a bad snap and a 15-yard penalty set up 20 of UNLV's points, which with a stout defense was all the Rebels needed, and more than even a 363-yard passing night by quarterback Tim Chang and an overburdened UH defense could overcome.

Few realistically expected UH to beat No. 4 Southern California in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. And, after UNLV stunned then-No.14 Wisconsin, there was the real possibility of losing here, too.

But nobody, including the psychics whose offices dot the landscape here, could have foreseen it being anything like this: Six turnovers and 12 penalties for 129 yards.

It wasn't so much what the Rebels did to UH, but what the Warriors did to themselves before 34,287 and a national cable audience, which was a lot.

UNLV didn't do much but hang around long enough and well enough to be the beneficiary of the Warriors' largesse. The Rebels' offense, outgained 417-296 by UH, just had to be functional, not turnover the ball, and kick field goals as the opportunities kept presenting themselves. Which, with the exception of one interception, was precisely what the Rebels did.

"It is hard enough to win on the road, but when you do what we do on the road, what we did tonight, you can't win," June Jones growled.

Indeed, on the night of the highest temperatures (95 degrees at kickoff) the school has played a road game in, the Warriors were anything but hot themselves. Except under the collar, perhaps.

In one 46 second stretch in the first quarter, the Warriors were called for two personal fouls. It was so bad that Jones called timeout and walked well onto the field in an attempt to bring order.

Said Jones: "We're not doing a good enough job and I'm not doing a good enough job and the players aren't either. If they want to keep losing, they just have to play stupid like that."

That's how you make a road trip like this one feel even longer.

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