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One of these nights the University of Hawaii football team is going to finally beat nemesis Boise State, but it is going to have to be when the Rainbow Warriors can hold their own on special teams.
And Saturday night wasn’t it. Not by a long shot. Or, in these telltale cases, some long punt and kickoff returns.
Boise State’s ninth consecutive victory over UH was built on the Broncos’ mastery of the kicking game which led to 20 points in the 40-32 victory at Aloha Stadium.
Only Brigham Young, with 10 consecutive victories between 1978 and ’88, has managed a longer string of domination over UH.
And it wasn’t hard to put the finger on where this one got away from the Rainbow Warriors. “Their special teams executed better than ours,” UH head coach Todd Graham acknowledged.
Jonah Laulu’s block of a point-after attempt was UH’s biggest special teams highlight.
>> PHOTOS: Boise State beats Hawaii
Safety and return specialist extraordinaire Avery Williams returned a punt for 34 yards to set up one touchdown, brought back a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown and returned another punt 36 yards to set up still another touchdown to help the Broncos to a 33-9 lead in the third quarter. Overall, Williams, who did not play offense, accounted for 192 all-purpose yards and the spark Boise State needed.
Taken together it proved to be too much of a hole for even the Warriors’ most spirited finish of the season, 15 unanswered fourth-quarter points, against the 4-1 (4-0 conference) Broncos on national television.
“That kickoff return for a touchdown was the difference in the game,” Graham sighed.
How the Warriors, trailing 19-9 in the third quarter, could even kick the ball in the vicinity of the Mountain West Conference’s returning special teams player of the year was puzzling.
“We were trying to kick the ball out of bounds, not kick it to him (Williams),” Graham said. “We did it all week (in practice) but, for whatever reason, we couldn’t get it done tonight.”
Because they couldn’t, the Rainbow Warriors gave up one of the longest kickoff returns in school history (the record book lists a 103-yard return and five 100 yarders) and now have their first losing record at any point since 2017, sitting at 2-3. With conference leader Nevada (5-0) coming to town Saturday.
In the process the Warriors squandered a remarkable performance of their own by running back/ wildcat Calvin Turner. The senior transfer from Jacksonville (Fla.) University accounted for 22 points on three touchdowns and two two-point conversions to fuel the comeback threat.
Turner, one of the last signees of former head coach Nick Rolovich, ran for a 1-yard touchdown, caught 36- and 15-yard touchdown passes from quarterback Chevan Cordeiro as well as running for a pair of two-point conversions to spark a late-arriving offense that was held without a first-half touchdown.
Even with the absence of 12 players due to COVID-19 impact — seven who tested positive and five who were held out for contact tracing — the Broncos still managed to win their 13th Mountain West Conference game over two seasons and remain in the thick of the conference race. That’s something UH is looking at from the outside.
Thanks in large part to the disparity in special teams play which, on this night, loomed large.
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Longest UH losing streaks by team
Streak Foe Years
10 BYU 1978-88
9 Boise St. 2008-20
9 S. Diego St. 1990-98
9 USC 1930-13
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
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