[ ARENA FOOTBALL ]
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Darrick Branch and Darrell Jones of the Hawaiian Islander celebrated a win over Wichita on Friday night.
Islanders left
bad game behindThe West Division champs
head to Tulsa after beating Wichita
As the Hawaiian Islanders prepared for their first appearance in the arenafootball2 playoffs on Friday, they found motivation in perhaps their worst performance of the regular season.
Just five days earlier, a ragged start led to a 75-61 loss in their regular-season finale against Bakersfield. It was a lesson the Islanders carried with them into their playoff game with the Wichita Stealth.
"You knew from the get-go we would not play like we did last week," Islanders coach Cal Lee said. "It was a wake-up call, a blessing in disguise, you name it, it had to have helped. It brought us down to reality that you have to do the right things in order to advance."
The Islanders, the West Division champions, jumped ahead of Wichita early in the contest and held off the Stealth the rest of the way to score a 57-30 victory and advance to the National Conference semifinals.
The Islanders (11-6) hit the road to face the Tulsa Talons at the Tulsa Convention Center on Saturday. The Talons (14-2) are the second seed in the conference and had a bye last week.
In yesterday's other semifinal, top-seeded Quad City (14-2) hosts Arkansas (10-7), a 36-28 winner over Bakersfield yesterday.
Should the Islanders defeat Tulsa and Arkansas upset Quad City, the Islanders would host the National Conference final at Blaisdell Arena next week, with the winner earning a berth in the ArenaCup.
Tulsa is one of just two franchises in af2 to have qualified for the playoffs every year in its history. The Talons are 3-0 against the Islanders over the past two seasons and rallied to a dramatic 48-47 win on July 12 in Tulsa.
But Lee doesn't want his players to start worrying about the Talons just yet.
"I told the players forget about Tulsa right now," Lee said after the Wichita game. "You win a playoff you should enjoy it, don't think about anything else."
Among the players who savored the victory over the Stealth most was quarterback Darnell Arceneaux, who threw six touchdown passes and ran for two more after struggling against Bakersfield last week.
Arceneaux completed just one of the his first nine passes and threw two interceptions in the first half against Bakersfield, but rebounded Friday by connecting on 11 of 16 throws and tossing touchdown passes to four different receivers as the Islanders took a 38-17 lead at halftime.
"We came out hot," Arceneaux said. "Last week we came out a little lackadaisical, a little flat, so this week we practiced like how we wanted to play this game. We came to practice ready to work.
"We were out there conditioning; we weren't worried about whether we were going to have legs or not. We just wanted to work hard, because that's what we do best -- work hard, hit and fly around."
Wichita, which entered the game having lost several key players to injuries over the course of the season, rallied to cut the deficit to single digits at 38-30 early in the third quarter.
However, the Stealth were dealt another blow when offensive specialist Shomari Buchanan was injured in the first half and his replacement, Johnny Journey, left the game with a cramp in his leg in the second half.
The Islanders then scored three unanswered touchdowns to put the game away.
"We definitely weren't at full speed," Wichita coach Sean Ponder said. "These guys played hard, they played through all kinds of adversity. We just had problems all this year and it's tough to come back from things like that."
In yesterday's American Conference first-round games, Mohegan defeated Cape Fear 50-47 and Macon beat Florida 42-35. Mohegan (11-6) plays at Tennessee Valley (14-2) and Macon (11-6) travels to Albany (13-3) on Saturday.
The only way the Islanders can host the ArenaCup is if Mohegan, the sixth seed in the American Conference, also advances to the final.
