Could it be that San Jose State is now Hawaii’s top rival in football? Seems there’s been a revolving door of them over the past few decades … BYU, Fresno State, Boise State, UNLV … all at various times; and they all remain so at least to some extent.
That’s a lot of teams to love to loathe, or at least like to dislike, more than the others. And, of course coaches and smart players will always tell you the most important opponent is the next one on the schedule.
Here’s the case for why San Jose State is now at the top of the sports-hate list for the Rainbow Warriors and their fans: The games aren’t always pretty, but they’re usually close, like Saturday’s 17-13 Hawaii loss at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletic Complex that served as the Mountain West opener for both teams. And there are plenty of emotional and historical connections and enough frantic finishes. Hey, any game where there’s a trophy at stake qualifies, in my mind. Frenemies make for good rivals.
Hawaii coach Todd Graham said he’d never been involved in a game with so many punts. This one had 11 by each team, and Graham identified the one that was blocked in the first half as a key to the outcome.
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The most untimely mistake, though, was the fumble late in the fourth quarter that led to a Spartans field goal, changing a 1-point deficit into Hawaii needing a touchdown, getting the ball with 1:11 left. We’ve seen Chevan Cordeiro pull rabbits out of hats like this one before, but the game ended with his desperation heave from the San Jose State 21 in the end zone, but incomplete.
As Graham said, it shouldn’t have come down to that.
After frittering away many opportunities in this one, you’ve got to believe the Warriors will be up for the next time they meet the Spartans. Last year, San Jose State dealt Hawaii its final conference loss at Aloha Stadium, and now its first league defeat on campus. That’s gotta sting — especially considering how winnable this one was.
“Yeah, this is my fourth year and I think we’re two-and-two with them,” said safety Kai Kaneshiro, whose interception set up UH’s final score, Matt Shipley’s 23-yard field goal that made it 14-13 in the third quarter. “We wanted to come back with a vengeance.”
This series is not as longstanding as many others in college football, going back to “only” 1936 … and it’s not the arch-enemies kind of rivalry (although Kaneshiro did mention there was a Tweet from the Spartans last year that the Warriors didn’t like).
These programs share two prominent names in their lore, Brennan and Tomey. UH’s greatest player, Colt Brennan, who died earlier this year, is a cousin of San Jose State’s head coach Brent Brennan (who was at one time an assistant at UH). Dick Tomey, who died in 2019, was the winningest head coach for both programs at the same time.
Going into last night’s game, I wondered if this would be more of a Tomey kind of game — conservative on offense, take care of the ball, field position. Or, would it be more of a Colt Brennan game, a high-scoring shootout? Bookmakers seemed to feel the latter, with an over-under total of 591⁄2.
And Kaneshiro’s memory is correct: In 2018 and ’19, UH won 44-41 in five overtimes and 42-40 in 2019. Those were Colt Brennan shootout kind of games.
A friend asked Saturday afternoon what Hawaii would have to do to win this game. Lots of things, of course. But two words came to mind first: Create turnovers. The way the UH defense yielded yards and points the first three games, that seemed like the only way to stop anyone’s offense.
That’s why, if someone told me beforehand Hawaii would punt 11 times and it’d be a close game, I’d have asked what was being smoked. OK, forcing turnovers — and taking advantage of them — is just half of it. You also can’t give the ball away late in a tight game, no matter how many points have been scored.
Regarding punts … maybe they’re usually boring, but danger lurks at every turn on them; for every 40-yard fair catch that signals a peaceful transition of power there are all kinds of weird and wacky things that can and will happen that will affect a close game — whether you are the team booting the ball away or on the receiving end.
Early on, the bounces went UH’s way, once when a pooch kick by San Jose State ended up being a dog that gave the Warriors good field position. And Hawaii downed one at the Spartans 1.
But, there were no long returns, there was that block, and ultimately UH lost the “invisible yards” part of the game.
There were few offensive highlights and way too many drops. But strong defense and the result being determined in the fourth quarter made it a game fitting for awarding of the Dick Tomey Legacy Trophy.
You like irony? The first year of the trophy, 2019, the total punts by both teams? Zero.
But 22 of them? Not even Tomey liked punts that much.
And no coach likes this many mistakes in a game. Somehow, though, when these teams make them against each other the game is still close. Rivalry games aren’t always pretty.
