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Owens was gone,
gone, gone
Need a big offensive play or two, who ya' gonna call?
For Hawaii in its 44-16 victory over Tulsa last night, the answer was Chad Owens.
The senior slotback did nothing more than his usual stuff, which is make crowd-pleasing, game-breaking plays.
Without Owens' two long touchdowns, the Warriors would have been in a heap of trouble. Instead of a 20-13 lead late in the third quarter, Hawaii would have been down by a score.
"Any time you have a chance to make big plays, you've gotta make big plays," Owens said. "But the whole team made big plays. Jason Rivers had a huge catch in the beginning of the game. It takes 10 other guys on the field to make it all work."
With the Warriors leading 6-3, Owens' brand of fireworks began with 9:12 left in the first half. He made a catch of a short, low Tim Chang pass, found a diagonal, left-to-right seam, and went virtually untouched 75 yards for a score.
Early in the third quarter, Owens received a Tulsa punt, made a few stutter steps and broke through a wall of tacklers to daylight on the right sideline for a 66-yard touchdown.
"It's the best feeling I've had in my life, to be in situations like that, knowing you're going to score," Owens said. "I got a great block from Chad Kapanui on the first one and another great block from C.J. Allen-Jones on the second one ... and I just ran, ran, ran."
The two big plays were reminiscent of Owens' performance in a 72-45 victory over Brigham Young during his freshman season. That's when he returned a kickoff and a punt for touchdowns and broke NCAA records for most combined return yards in a game (342) and most yards on kickoff returns (249).
But Owens' game-breaking scores last night were also a sharp contrast to his output in the first two games of the year. He may have come in as Hawaii's leading receiver, averaging 90 yards per game, but both his longest catch and his longest return previously this season were for 28 yards.
Owens' 23-yard catch also set up Hawaii's third touchdown -- Se'e Poumele's 29-yard grab from Chang -- for a 27-13 lead with 2:17 to go in the third quarter.
Owens' only noticeable mistake was when a Tulsa punt bounded off his hands with 8:04 left and Hawaii holding a 30-16 lead. But teammate Omega Hogan recovered to mitigate the damage.
The fired-up Owens didn't take long to make up for the miscue. On the next series, he caught a Chang rope for 45 yards. The play set up Owens' third touchdown of the night, a 7-yard toss across the middle from Chang for a 37-16 lead to put the Golden Hurricane away for good.
Owens finished with eight catches for a career-high-tying 182 yards to go along with his three touchdowns.
"We came out here after our 0-2 start and showed character and did the job," he said.
