Ken Niumatalolo keeps Navy from overlooking UH

Be advised, the Navy has been placed on alert.

Already wary of the Sept. 1 meeting with the University of Hawaii at Aloha Stadium going into fall camp, Navy head coach Kenny Niumatalolo vowed Sunday there will be no sleeping on the Rainbow Warriors, who have the Midshipmen’s attention.

“I was super impressed with their victory over Colorado State, the way they played. To go into Fort Collins is not an easy place to play and they got a really, really good win,” Niumatalolo said.

Niumatalolo said, “What (Nick Rolovich) is doing with the run-and-shoot, I have kind of mixed emotions (about). I mean, how do I put this? I loved watching them on offense but I (also) didn’t like it because I know we’re going to play them next.”

Even before quarterback Cole McDonald and the Rainbow Warriors ran and shot their way to a 43-34 victory over CSU Saturday night, the Midshipmen had been bracing for potentially stormy seas this week.

“We’ve definitely discussed it this year,” Navy quarterback Malcolm Perry said last week in advance of the Rainbow Warriors’ opener.

The game will be the season opener for the Midshipmen and it was circled early on by the coaches as a potential trap door game on the schedule despite Navy opening as a 17-point favorite on the Las Vegas betting lines.

In fact, you could say Niumatalolo has been wary of the game for going on a decade, ever since the ’Bows pulled out a 24-17 victory over the Midshipmen in the penultimate game of the 2009 regular season at Aloha Stadium.

The Midshipmen were on the way to what would have otherwise been an 11-3 season when the ’Bows, behind a sterling defense devised by then-defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, pulled off the upset. For the ’Bows, two-touchdown underdogs who finished 6-7, it made for a season highlight.

For Niumatalolo, a former UH player and coach, it was just the opposite. “We are never going to review this tape with the team. I want this game to be over with,” Niumatalolo said at the time. “I’m not sure our players realized how fired up this team would be. We didn’t match their intensity.”

Niumatalolo added, “We have to forget about this game and move on.”

But, he hasn’t, even with Navy winning the return match, a 42-28 triumph at Annapolis in 2013.

Which is why the Midshipmen have been counseled for some time now. “Part of our preparation is to learn from the past,” Perry said. “We know it isn’t a vacation and even though a lot of us have never been to Hawaii and we know it is a beautiful place, we know not to get sidetracked.”

That apparently figured in travel plans since the Midshipmen are scheduled to arrive Thursday instead of Tuesday as was the case on the ill-fated 2009 trip that surrounded Thanksgiving.

When the current two-game, home-and-home contract was signed in 2011 it called for the 2011 game at Navy and a 2015 game at Aloha Stadium. But with Navy joining the American Athletic Conference in 2015 and needing to clear space for conference games, the contest at Aloha Stadium was bumped to this year.

What was to have been the season opener for both teams changed in the spring when UH and CSU moved their late September game to last Saturday and the so-called “week zero.”

As the last scheduled meeting between the two teams for the foreseeable future it becomes, Niumatalolo said, “the rubber match. And we’re going to have to be ready or (2009) could happen to us, again.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.