Hawaii's Lincoln Manutai and Lui Fuga chased down Idaho quarterback Brian Nooy in last night's game.
Loss ends long season
for the Vandals
Idaho is breathing a sigh of relief after its 52-21 loss to Hawaii last night at Aloha Stadium.
The Vandals finished their season 3-9, and for the first time since September, they don't have to take a one-week crash course in preparing for their next opponent.
Many of the players are staying until Thanksgiving Day to soak up the Hawaii sun and get some needed rest before heading home to enjoy the remaining days of their college break.
"I'm going to relax," said linebacker Cole Snyder, who had a game-high 11 stops, including a sack and another tackle for loss. "It's been a long year. We traveled 28,000 miles this season and I think that's the most in the country. This is a good time to get off my feet and go to the beach."
He's looking forward to returning for his senior season, when Idaho enters the Western Athletic Conference.
"We didn't have a lot of seniors, but they played their butts off, and we don't have a lot of seniors coming up, either," Snyder added.
"We've got a few more years to go before we can be a powerhouse. But I think we can be competitive in the WAC. We accomplished a lot this year. We learned a new scheme (under first-year head coach Nick Holt) and now we've got to carry it over to next year."
One player who won't be back is senior wide receiver Bobby Bernal-Wood, who caught nine passes last night to set a school record for career receptions with 96.
"There's so many moments that I'll remember from this year," he said. "From two-a-days to going bowling and to the water park with the whole team. We were a family off the field. They're bringing in guys they want (for next year), and they're going to be awesome at wide receiver. It kind of sucks leaving at the beginning of the building process. But I was happy to be a Vandal and I can be proud that my teammates can look back and say, 'He did it right.' "
Holt, who was a defensive coordinator at Idaho in the late 1990s and spent 2001 through 2003 as Pete Carroll's assistant at Southern California, thinks the program is on the way up.
"We made a lot of progress," Holt said. "We made it through a really bad tragedy (cornerback Eric McMillan was shot to death early in the season), and we kept on battling and got better. We don't have the talent right now to be great, but maybe we can get it accomplished with a couple of more recruiting classes."
Losing starting running back Jayson Bird to a severely sprained knee early in last week's loss to North Texas really hurt. Bird was the team's leading rusher with 859 yards and eight TDs.
"If he were in, maybe we could have held the ball a little longer and got more scores," Holt said about last night's loss. "The way it turned out, I'm disappointed we didn't put at least 35 points on the board after scoring 21 in the first half."
Quarterback Michael Harrington, the brother of Detroit Lions quarterback Joey Harrington, is another one of the Vandals looking forward to some rest.
"I'm staying a few days, until Thanksgiving, and see what kind of trouble I can get in," Harrington joked.
"Finishing 3-9 isn't great, but I can find a lot of positives. One of them is Bernal-Wood setting the receptions record," added Harrington, who won't be satisfied until the Vandals become a winner.
"Winning isn't everything, but it's pretty darn close."
