Hawaii routed at Fresno State
The Hawaii football team’s recent woes continued unabated in a 50-20 loss at Fresno State on Saturday.
It was the third straight loss for the Rainbow Warriors, who dropped to 6-4 overall and 3-2 in the Mountain West Conference heading into another tough matchup, at home against Utah State next weekend.
UH was outplayed in all phases by its erstwhile rival FSU (7-1, 4-0). The Bulldogs, led by quarterback Marcus McMaryion, rolled up 562 yards of total offense without a turnover to beat the ‘Bows for the seventh time in eight years.
UH quarterback Cole McDonald was 17-for-28 with a touchdown and an interception, his fourth of the year. His 50-yard touchdown to JoJo Ward in the first quarter brought UH within 14-10, but it was all Bulldogs from there.
The Rainbows’ ground game was limited to 88 yards against the conference’s top defense, with McDonald taking it himself 12 times for 62 yards to lead the team.
McMaryion was 21-for-31 for 284 yards and four touchdown passes. Running back Ronnie Rivers ran for 125 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries. And Jamire Jordan caught a scoring pass and had the game’s back-breaking play — a “kick-six” 100-yard return out of the FSU end zone when UH’s Ryan Meskell was short on a 53-yard field-goal attempt as time expired in the first half. That made it 37-13 going into intermission.
KeeSean Johnson caught eight balls for 102 yards to become Fresno State’s all-time receptions leader.
McDonald gave way late to third-stringer Jeremy Moussa. The freshman lofted a 27-yard rainbow scoring pass to Devan Stubblefield with 1:43 to play in the game.
Here is the Star-Advertiser’s full breaking story.
A few other shots from the game:
Looks like Tavai is done and looking forward to the nfl combine
Despite Cole’s somewhat success running the ball, Rolo continues to stick to the run game even though it’s NOT working! Play calling sucks! Stick to the passing game which clearly showed where the momentum was.
This just hurts to watch for this football team. They started out hot, and right after the loss to BYU, their morale COMPLETELY got devastated. The average height from looking at UH’s defensive line appeared to look like 6’1″ to about 6’3″. They got SMASHED by a BYU offense with an average height of 6’5″. I get what the defensive coordinators are trying to do, create mismatches, but at the same time, winning defense with short players probably won’t have your way not all the time. When UH’s O-Line was facing BYU, they had issues containing the 6’9″ Kaufusi. Seriously…this kind of height (6’6″ to 6’9″) is what could possibly be needed for defense. We had Viane Moala for a time, (but left to transfer to Utah) but after that, there wasn’t a tall defensive player in the roster. The tallest within there was 6’5″ on the roster, and the shortest was 5’11”. I get it if they’re trying to go for speed, but at the same time, they need a balanced defensive line that can stay disciplined and be able to withstand tough opponents’ offenses. The O-Line for Hawaii was pretty decent with 6’6″ Levao, but the issue is that the offense has not been able to execute in the same way we have seen in the beginning of the season. Few things this football program has to consider if they really want to find back the success again: Good assets, no liabilities to the team, finding a way to replace the talent lost, good communication and teamwork, finding a way to maintain momentum after winning a good (Pac-12, Big 10, Big 12) game, no 3-or-more game losing streaks, and being able to not let a despair-like loss afflict them in the long haul. If Rolo or Matlin sees this, I’m hoping the word will be spread out and give a message to knowing that we want to see the program go back to its winning ways.
#LongLiveHawaiiFootball
Coaching staff and players looks like they’ve given up and the effort and fight is gone. Time to move on and bring in a new coaching staff who can bring in better talent and who can teach better fundamentals.
It just kills me to see the team playing this bad after a great start. I hope they can get themselves together and stick together because this is absolutely a team loss and no single reason to blame it on. Captains do your thing and bring the glue.
If the Hawai‘i Rainbow Warriors manage to get it together and defeat the Utah State Aggies, they can hold their heads up high as they accept a Hawai‘i Bowl bid. But if they lose, is a win over UNLV enough to justify a 7-6 bowl team that finished near the bottom of conference play?
Hawaii Bowl is the bottom of the league conference.
UNLV has Armani Jones, 6-5 quarterback. How could UNLV possibly lose?
Utah State (H)
UNLV (H)
San Diego State (A)
Chances of them losing 3 in a row?