Sidelines
JUNE Jones called them all in and they gathered around him, sweating, heaving, feeling self-satisfied and proud and together --the way football players do when practice is over and they kneel looking up at their coach. A few had pads off, smiles on. It was the last day of spring, and the guys were feeling great. Spring ends and
the questions beginIt spilled out of them afterward, yesterday, the horseplaying and dog piling and goose chasing, tussles and giggles and joy of being college kids on a sunny April morning with practice behind them. And everything ahead.
They should feel good. Oh, it's fun to be a Hawaii football player these days. At the end of these spring exercises, this is a team that has potential.
The program is in place, on paper. Jones has figured out this college coaching thing. He seems refocused on the game itself, and it's a delight to watch him work the practice field.
It's working, all of it, and the guys know it. The team looks good this spring (don't they all?), like a winner. But a couple of holes are yet unfilled.
>> Quarterback. Am I the only one wondering about how Timmy Chang will come back? He's all smiles and still the starter and everyone is assured that he'll return good as new, pick up right where he left off. But even if the injury didn't raise a red flag (remember, Jared Flint was never the same), he needed this spring.
Those with long memories know I love Chang's talent and his luminosity. But missing this time hurts him. He needed it. Needed the reps and the routine and the timing. Needed to get his groove back. Needed to get the team back.
Needed to remind them why they once believed.
It takes a year and a half to get the run-and-shoot offense, to really get it, to play it perfectly. Rolo showed us that -- he and everyone before him. Otherwise, it gets a lot of yards and a lot of touchdowns and a lot of thrills, but last year's final stretch finally showed us for the first time what the real thing can do. Nick Rolovich was in such a zone at the end of last season it was like playing poker against a guy with X-ray vision.
Hawaii currently doesn't have a guy like that. Not now. Not yet.
>> Justin Colbert is looking like a polished go-to guy, and Chad Owens is showing moves that haven't even been invented, but you can't replace a sonic boom that could get deep any time you asked.
"He ate us alive," Fresno State coach Pat Hill said.
Ashley Lelie could do that, showing that the one thing that makes the run-and-shoot work is a guy who can bail you out when it doesn't.
How many wins does that translate to? How many plays that, one by one, collectively turned the tide? How many games (see Fresno State) did it buy them until Rolo grasped it all?
He made UH a different team. And it is a different team without him.
But I digress ...
It's been a successful spring and the players deserved to feel good heading into tomorrow's challenge. They don't worry about any of these things. That's for sportswriters. And fans. And coaches, late into the night.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com