For tonight’s homecoming game at Aloha Stadium, the Hawaii football team is attempting to bring back the fighting spirit.
On Friday night, the Warriors watched the movie "The Last Samurai."
Tonight, former UFC champion BJ Penn will represent the Warriors as an honorary captain.
There also will be some lineup tweaks as the Warriors renew their series with New Mexico after a 14-season hiatus.
The last time the teams met was in 1998, when both were members of the Western Athletic Conference. The Lobos, who were led by safety Brian Urlacher, were among eight schools to secede from the WAC to form the Mountain West Conference. UH joined the MWC this past summer.
Both programs have new head coaches — Hawaii’s Norm Chow and New Mexico’s Bob Davie, who was Notre Dame’s head coach before a 10-year stint as a television football analyst.
The Warriors are 1-4 after suffering blowout losses to four FBS schools. Their only victory was against Lamar.
The Lobos are a surprising 3-3 overall after going 1-11 in each of the previous three seasons. They narrowly lost to Boise State, 32-29, on Sept. 29. Still, the Lobos have not won a game outside of New Mexico since 2007.
Hawaii’s defensive line regains Siasau Matagiese, who missed last week’s game because of a neck stinger and slight concussion. But the Warriors still will be without injured defensive tackles Moses Samia, Geordon Hanohano and Calen Frield, and now Jordan Pu‘u-Robinson will miss two games after undergoing surgery for a fractured finger. Running back Joey Iosefa will miss his fourth consecutive game because of a fracture in his right foot.
The Warriors will start freshman linebackers Benneton "Benny" Fonua, Jerrol Garcia-Williams and Kendrick Van Ackeren. If tight end Harold Moleni and safety Charles Clay are in the opening lineup, the Warriors will have had 23 first-time starters this season, tops in the nation.
This is the Warriors’ only home game in October. They recently played back-to-back road games against Brigham Young and San Diego State. There is a bye next week, followed by consecutive road games against Colorado State and Fresno State. In a seven-week span, the Warriors will have been at home once. Their next game at Aloha Stadium is on Nov. 10.
The Lobos arrived Thursday afternoon on a charter flight paid for by UH. Davie told his players they would be on a sightless-seeing trip.
"They told us the biggest sightseeing we’re going to do is when we land the plane in Honolulu," linebacker Dallas Bollema said.
Of the lockdown, Davie said: "I may not have said that to all of them when I recruited them last year, but that’s the message they’re getting now. That’s what it is."
