Hawaii Football Throwbacks: Washington

What will it take for upstart Hawaii to pull off the upset of No. 23 Washington in Seattle today?

All the Rainbow Warriors need to do is look at the blueprint of their forebears.

In this week’s Hawaii Football Throwbacks, the Rainbows relive one of the signature road victories in program history, a 10-7 stunner of Washington and its 52,000 fans in the season opener on Sept. 15, 1973 at Husky Stadium.

It was a period of transition for the Rainbows. At the time, Aloha Stadium was closing in on completion. It was an open question back home what would happen to the site of the Old Honolulu Stadium. A park? Student housing? Commercial development?

Wrote Honolulu Advertiser sportswriter Bruce Spinks from Seattle, “Shout it from South Bend to Columbus to Birmingham to Baton Rouge. Wake the town and tell the people in Norman and Austin and Palo Alto and Los Angeles and all the other citadels of college football.

“Kick down the door and inform the world that Hawaii — the proud Aloha State — has something besides pineapples and hula girls. Make them listen. Make them understand that the University of Hawaii has a football team. And if they still don’t believe it, just tell them to ask the University of Washington.”

Washington was a heavy favorite coming off an 8-3 season the year before in the powerful Pac-8. UH was also coming off an 8-3 season, but as a D-I independent.

UH coach Dave Holmes, a Wenatchoe, Wash., native, had veteran seniors aplenty. He started 13, compared to nine sophomores and six juniors for the Huskies.

“This has to be the biggest win ever for me,” Holmes exclaimed in the visitors dressing room. The 1973 season, his sixth, would wind up being his last.

He told his team: “Men, I didn’t want to try to convince you to win this game for ol’ Dave. But we did it in my home state and I think you know what it means to me. But more than that, we accomplished two very important things. First, we beat a Pac-8 football team. Now maybe some of those people who think we’re some sort of pushovers will start giving us a little more respect.

“Second, we’ve just taken one of the hardest steps toward going 11-0.”

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Seventeenth-year UW coach Jim Owens gave UH credit and said his team did not take the Rainbows lightly. But he added that “I think we were all embarrassed.”

Owens had a new quarterback in James Anderson, charged with running the sprint option offense, and later Denny Fitzpatrick when Anderson got hurt. UH turned to SMU transfer Cassey Ortez, who beat out a pack of contenders at QB including Oregon transfer June Jones.

Ortez tossed the 24-yard game-winning touchdown to Allen Brown in the third quarter. Running backs Albert Holmes and Tui Ala combined for 37 carries and 185 yards, including some important late yardage to run out the clock.

But the UH defense won the day; it held on fourth-down conversion attempts by the Huskies an incredible five times, including three times inside the Rainbows’ 10. Tackle Levi Stanley amassed 11 tackles and cornerback Harold Stringert came down with three interceptions. Stringert’s hat-trick pick took it away from a desperate UW with 3:37 remaining.

The D kept UH in the game despite six turnovers (four lost fumbles and two picks).

“We just kept telling each other we had to suck ’em up,” said Stanley, a Waianae native. “We looked at it like we were about to be shoved off a cliff and we couldn’t let it happen. We proved who was king of the mountain.”

Washington struck first, a 1-yard first-quarter TD by fullback Pete Taggares. UH got on the board with a 27-yard field goal by Austrian-born kicker Reinhold Stuprich later in the quarter.

Then both defenses dug in. Nothing happened until UH’s 71-yard scoring drive in the third; Holmes had a 33-yard scamper to help set up Ortez’s scoring toss, described as “perfect” by Spinks, out of reach of cornerback Pedro Hawkins and into Brown’s hands.

UH went on to go 9-2, including an 8-0 start. It lost to Pacific and San Jose State consecutively before ending the season with a 7-6 win over Utah.

The tone for a foul season for UW was set with this game. The Huskies struggled to 2-9, including a 52-26 loss to rival Washington State in the Apple Cup. The following season was Owens’ last at UW.

Washington leads the series 3-2, but it’s tied 1-1 in Seattle.

Here’s PDFs of the combined Honolulu Advertiser/Honolulu Star-Bulletin coverage in the following day’s paper.

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