Hawaii football opens 2021 season with disappointing rout at UCLA

PASADENA, CALIF. >> On an SPF-100 day, the University of Hawaii football team could not overcome the heat nor UCLA in a searing 44-10 loss in the Rose Bowl.

There was the sweltering pressure from a UCLA defense that held the Rainbow Warriors to 3.6 yards per play.

There was the Bruins’ blue-hot ground game that produced four first-half touchdowns, including three by Michigan transfer Zach Charbonnet on six carries, in sizzling to a 31-3 lead at the intermission.

And there was the 90-degree dry conditions that left at least 10 Warriors aching from hydration-deficient cramps.

“We didn’t coach well, didn’t play offense well, didn’t play defense well,” UH coach Todd Graham said of the season opener.

UCLA won the coin toss and seemingly everything else after that. The Bruins benefited from a challenge resulting in a 70-yard swing in field position. A 275-pound defensive tackle made an acrobatic one-handed interception. And the Bruins scored on a block-and-scoop — the Warriors’ first punt rejection since 2008, a span of 154 games.

“We got beat by a team that was better than us today,” said Graham, who is in his second season as UH head coach. “But we made them look a lot better by playing poorly.”

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The Bruins were gifted an early opportunity when the Warriors’ first drive stalled. After Matthew Shipley launched a punt, the replay official sent a review alert. The official then confirmed that Shipley’s right knee touched the grass when he tried to handle a low and errant snap from Wyatt Tucker. UCLA was awarded possession at the UH 15. The Warriors held the Bruins to Nicholas Barr-Mira’s 27-yard field goal, but the theme was written.

The Bruins, as promised, then unleashed a running game that the Warriors could not consistently contain. In Zoom interviews leading to the game, the Bruins did not mask their strategy of powering against an opponent that yielded more than 200 rushing yards per game in 2020.

And while the Bruins’ offense usually revolves around dual-threat quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson — “DTR” to the UCLA faithful — this time the carries went to running backs Brittain Brown and Charbonnet.

“We expected them to run the football,” Graham said, noting the Bruins went with a four-scheme menu: Belly G (guards leading a dive), pin-and-pull sweep, wide zone and inside zone. “Quarterback didn’t keep it much,” Graham said. “We didn’t want him to keep it. We just didn’t tackle well. We didn’t get off blocks.”

Charbonnet, a one-cut runner, juked left and dashed the middle for a 21-yard touchdown and a 10-0 lead.

UH’s ensuing possession was abbreviated to two plays when Datona Jackson reached out to make a right-handed interception of a Cordeiro pass. “He read out the screen,” Cordeiro said. “Good for him.”

The Bruins parlayed that turnover into Brown’s 1-yard run for a 17-0 cushion.

After Charbonnet found the end zone twice more, on runs of 47 and 21 yards, the Bruins had created scoring distance at 31-3 ahead of the intermission.

By then, the Bruins had amassed 203 rushing yards, an average of 9.7 yards per carry. Charbonnet also was done for the game, finishing with 106 yards on six first-half carries, translating to 17.7 yards per rush.

The Bruins dusted off coach Chip Kelly’s metronome from his tenure at Oregon, when the Ducks ran a play every 15 seconds. On Saturday, it was center Jon Gaines II calling the cadences. “They definitely were going really fast,” UH defensive end Jonah Laulu said. “Hat’s off to them. The pace of their tempo was really good.”

The Bruins’ first-half success on the ground set up their opening drive of the second half. Thompson-Robinson lofted a 44-yard scoring fade to speedy Kazmeir Allen, who once won ran 100 meters in 10.4 seconds in a California high school meet.

With a quarter-plus to go, the Bruins completed their scoring when Alabama transfer Ale Kaho sped through an inside gap to block Shipley’s punt. David Priebe retrieved the football in the end zone for the touchdown.

Cordeiro’s 1-yard scoring pass to tight end Caleb Phillips was one of the Warriors’ few offensive bright spots. Cordeiro was 25-for-47 for 220 yards, with 49 coming on a completion to Aaron Cephus. But Cordeiro had to navigate the Bruins’ all-points blitzes, including high-handed charges from rush ends posing as volleyball middle blockers, and, at least, five catchable passes that were not caught. When Calvin Turner, UH’s top playmaker, aligned in front of the tackle box as a slot, the Bruins would assign a personal defender in their version of a box-and-one coverage.

“They were bracketing me a little bit,” said Turner, who caught five passes for 50 yards.

The Warriors’ running game also could not gain any traction. Not counting the 15 yards in sacks, the Warriors had 41 rushing yards on 19 carries.

“We had dropped balls,” Graham said. “We had check-downs we missed. We just didn’t execute. We didn’t play well. We played poorly.”

Turner said: “We started really slow, and there wasn’t enough time to come back. We were too down in the hole to come back.”