HONOLULU — Penei Pavihi got the heads up from a couple of guys in the know.

Before coming to play at the University of Hawaii in the mid-2010s, defensive backs Kalen Hicks and Ikem Okeke were part of a national championship high school program, Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas, where Chris Brown was the defensive coordinator.

What You Need To Know

  • First-year Hawaii football coach Timmy Chang turned to one of his old UH teammates, linebacker Chris Brown, as one of his first staff hires upon getting the job in January

  • Brown has attempted to instill an ethos of toughness in the UH linebackers that he calls the "Lion's Den"

  • Three senior linebackers, Penei Pavihi, Isaiah Tufaga and Logan Taylor, have been counted on to set the tone in practices with scrappiness during drills

  • UH will hold its most substantial scrimmage so far in fall camp on Saturday night at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex

It was January. Brown had just accepted the job of linebackers coach at UH under his former Rainbow Warrior teammate, Timmy Chang.

The prediction from Hicks and Okeke? Pain.

“They messaged me earlier in the spring to get my mind right because I’m about to ...” said Pavihi, the sixth-year UH linebacker who overlapped for three years with Hicks and Okeke, before pausing to laugh. “I should start icing after practice, is what they were hinting to.”

And so it has played out as the ‘Bows, through spring ball and summer workouts and now two weeks into fall camp, experience the daily test of manhood known by Brown as the “Lion’s Den.”

There is no room for hesitation and timidity in that space. Pavihi, who is on the fourth linebackers coach of his college career, already knows its tenets well.

“The lion may not be the biggest, strongest or fastest in the jungle, but what it makes it the most fierce is its mentality, and that’s what he’s trying to instill in us,” Pavihi said.

Ferocity was Brown’s specialty as an All-WAC linebacker from 1998 to 2002 as the Damien graduate was among the group of players that reforged the Rainbow Warriors’ identity from a hard-luck loser into a hard-hitting winner.

UH has increasingly worn pads and gone full contact during this fall camp as the Aug. 27 opener against Vanderbilt approaches. Brown was asked recently if the level of feistiness among the linebackers meets with his approval.

“You’re asking the wrong guy that. You’re asking a guy who will fight on any given play,” Brown said with a chuckle. “I love scrapping in there. I think fire should be at any given practice. But any time we strap it up and it’s live, it’s on. Man, it’s on. There’s no holding back. I tell these boys, no flags, and you do it between the whistles the right way. But you let them know exactly who’s there.”

Brown, a native of Kahaluu now in his early 40s, looks like he could strap on the pads today and make an impact at practice as much literal as figurative. Players have noticed that he’s either in the workout room before they arrive or getting in work once they prepare to leave.

He was one of the first announced hires by Chang, who kept in regular touch with his old teammate through Chang’s time as an assistant coach at Nevada.

“Chris Brown bleeds and embodies our Warrior football, who we are. He’s everything about it,” Chang said, noting he worked his way up as a walk-on and agreed to play defensive line, out of his natural position, as a sophomore. “He’s one of the guys that helped put the program on his back and built it, along with his other brothers.”

Chang expects him to make an impact in general recruiting as well as with his linebackers unit; Brown was able to help integrate a number of Hawaii kids to play for national powerhouse Bishop Gorman, where he spent the last six years following stops at Damien (three years) and Saint Louis (seven).

While in Vegas, Brown periodically visited his alma mater, occasionally stopping by practice to catch up and reminisce.

It’s a little different now that he’s back on a permanent basis for his first college coaching gig. But he said the offensive-minded Chang and he have an easy back-and-forth about the two sides of the ball.

If there’s a scrappy moment at practice, even better.

“Every time I walk through those two gates to the practice field, I feel it. Sometimes I get teary eyed,” Brown said. “Very grateful to be back, very grateful for (UH) to be back on the island with the people and representing the ‘H’ again.”

As much as he’s emphasized proper use of hands, gap integrity and the technical aspects of grappling with an offensive lineman or making an open-field tackle, Brown is keeping an eye on who his “lions” are.

He credited Pavihi and fellow seniors Isaiah Tufaga and Logan Taylor with setting that tone so far.

“I love a lot of talk,” Brown said. “Some trash talk, but yelling out the different formations and being active with (your) voice out there. (Taylor) has stepped up big time.”

UH will hold its most extensive scrimmage of the fall at the Clarence T.C. Ching Complex on Saturday night, a session that is expected to solidify the team's depth chart for the remaining practices before the Vanderbilt game.

Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.