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Sports Watch
ON a Saturday when it was The Game for many college football rivals, the University of Hawaii was playing a game against Louisiana Tech for the first time. UH looking to
badger BadgersFortunately, the UH defense, quarterback Tim Chang and running back James Fenderson all had their "A Game."
The result was a 27-10 victory over the future Western Athletic Conference rival. And the victory put Hawaii in a good frame of mind for Saturday's game with the Wisconsin Badgers.
Beating "La Tech," playing its final game as an independent, is one thing. Taking on a team from the Big Ten is something else.
Still, beating the big, bad Badgers isn't that impossible a feat, according to Chang and the rest of his teammates.
"Any team is beatable," said the freshman quarterback, who completed 11 of his first 13 passes and wound up throwing for 391 yards and two touchdowns against the Bulldogs.
A real positive, Chang felt, were the scoring drives of 95 and 93 yards in the game.
The eight-play, 95-yarder put Hawaii up, 14-0, after it went 65 yards on its first scoring drive.
The 93-yard march was capped by Chang throwing a 25-yard strike to Channon Harris.
"It's good to put together drives like that. We hold on to the ball and keep our defense off the field and rested," Chang said. "I know coach June Jones loves it and I love it, too."
Fenderson, a human pinball when it comes to bouncing off tacklers, ran for two touchdowns and recorded his third straight 100-yard game, fourth overall, in giving the offense a much needed extra dimension.
'That's the way I see myself. Pinball running," said Fenderson, a senior who came off the special teams to take charge at running back.
"James Fenderson has just been unbelievable the last four weeks," Jones said.
"He's as solid a player as there is in the country at that position. He's going to open a lot of eyes, come draft day. He'll get a shot to play for somebody."
The defense, too, drew a lot of praise from the UH coach.
"I thought the defense made a lot of plays and Jacob Espiau had a fantastic game. So did a lot of other people."
THE junior strong safety intercepted three passes to tie a school record. Espiau credited an aggressive front seven that forced the Bulldogs' freshman QB Luke McCown into hurrying his throws.
"Our front seven was really getting on him. When they got to the quarterback, it made it a lot easier for us in the back," Espiau said.
The UH defense held Louisiana Tech significantly below its game averages in points and yardage. The Bulldogs had been averaging 27.9 points and 424.4 yards a game. They had just 10 points and 287 net yards.
Winning two in a row gives UH a boost going into the last two games of the season against Wisconsin and UNLV, according to Jones.
"Wisconsin will be a tremendous challenge for us to beat. Hopefully, we can find a way to win," he said.
Jones has a lot of believers thinking they can.
For one, Manly Kanoa, the 6-foot-5, 314-pound junior who has been the stalwart of an otherwise patched-up offensive line that again gave Chang a sack-free night.
"Beating Wisconsin isn't impossible," Kanoa said.
"Any team can be beaten on any given day. They're coming into our backyard. We're going to have a lot of emotion coming off these two wins. I think we can pull this one off."
It would certainly salvage a season of disappointment.