honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, September 21, 2003

Warriors need leaders to step up

 •  Warriors will have short time to regroup
 •  No. Illinois stuns Alabama to end skid against SEC

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

The University of Hawai'i football team has been here before.

It has lost back-to-back games early in the season after beating up on a Division I-AA opponent. It has stood at 1-2 with water rising around its hip pads. It has felt the disappointment of its under-performance and the accompanying sting of public criticism before finding its way to a celebrated ending.

So, there is something of a road map out of the current predicament, if only the Warriors can follow it to daylight.

It is called the 2001 season, and the memory of that troubled-to-triumphant season and how the mid-course change was made might be one of the best things the Warriors have going for them as the clock ticks on the 2003 season.

For it stands as one of the best in-season corrections by a recent Warrior team and coaching staff, a still-fresh blueprint for those in need might follow.

Indeed, such was the turnaround to a 9-3 finish, given an exclamation point by the season-ending bombardment of Brigham Young on national TV, that few remember the depth of the early struggles that went into it.

So when the Warriors are mired in self-destructive turnovers, nonsensical penalties and failed rallies, as they clearly are now, you think about a way out and who will lead them there.

When head coach June Jones, like a man at wit's end, sounds the trumpet of, "Everybody has to rally around each other," it is the lessons of that 2001 season that should come to mind.

That team had talent, too, but didn't go anywhere until it found its leaders and its focus. It found them in the personalities and deeds of linebacker Chris Brown, quarterback Nick Rolovich and a handful of others in a way that this year's team still struggles to do.

Giving up 42 consecutive points at Southern Cal and 20 unanswered points at UNLV suggests more than a huge difference of talent or luck. It points directly to focus, discipline and will.

Look down the lineup and it is obvious the 2003 team does not lack for potential game-breakers. But it has yet to identify and rally around its leaders, whoever they might turn out to be.

It still waits for somebody — or several somebodies — to take over this team and instill in it a personality to see it through games like Friday's loss at UNLV. The Warriors are looking for someone to emerge and give them the leadership and the spark that have obviously been lacking.

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