HONOLULU — It was time, Rod York decided.
The Mililani football coach had seen enough ahead of Saturday night’s Oahu Interscholastic Association Open Division championship game against Kahuku. His junior quarterback, Kini McMillan, was ready to assume a rare honor: play-calling duty.
McMillan did not disappoint, making the right calls and decisions when it mattered at Farrington’s Skippa Diaz Stadium. He used his arm to build a first-half lead on the Red Raiders, then his legs to finish off a rousing 28-21 upset over the North Shore power for Mililani’s fifth all-time OIA title, all since 2010 under York.
“We had to come with everything,” York said.
McMillan threw three touchdowns on 20-for-37 passing for 272 yards, but it was his career-high 108 yards on the ground that put the Trojans (10-1) over the top. He punched in the go-ahead score from 1 yard with 6:32 to play.
Kahuku, ranked No. 8 nationally, saw its 31-game winning streak against Hawaii teams — dating back to the start of the 2021 season — come to an end. Both teams came into Saturday night assured of state berths; with the win, Mililani earned the top seed in the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA playoffs and will play OIA third-place team Campbell (9-3) in a 4 p.m. semifinal at John Kauinana Stadium on Nov. 17, with the winner headed to the first championship at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex on Nov. 24. In the other Nov. 17 semifinal, Kahuku (10-2) will face ILH champion Punahou (7-2) in a juggernaut interleague matchup.
York has been blessed with talented dual-threat quarterbacks who went on to excel at the next level in McKenzie Milton (UCF, Florida State) and Dillon Gabriel (UCF, Oklahoma). Milton led the Trojans to the 2014 top division state title. Gabriel led the school to the 2016 Division I (middle tier) championship and left as the Hawaii high school all-time passing leader with 9,948 career yards.
But York had always been reticent to turn over selection of plays to players.
“Never. Never,” York said. “But after Dillon Gabriel, I probably should have coached him a lot better. So I’ve learned from that relationship. And him continuing on. … Kini benefited more. I trust Kini and I trust my players a lot more. We do a lot of work. Kini already knows; his dad is a great coach at the youth level. Give a lot of credit to him, too, working with Kini, kind of similar to Dillon (with his father, former Hawaii quarterback Garrett Gabriel).
“McKenzie, sorry (to him, he) was the first one. So, but yeah, I let (McMillan) have it. We rode it through the mistakes and he came back and gave us the win.”
McMillan deflected credit to his linemen in a postgame Spectrum OC16 interview and demurred when asked about comparisons to Milton and Gabriel.
“You know, it means a lot, but like I said, without God I’m nothing and it’s just a team effort and without the team there’s no (winning), so I’m thankful,” McMillan said.
On play after play in the second half, McMillan scrambled, picked up clutch yardage to move the chains while taking hits from the Red Raiders’ bruising defenders.
Kahuku (10-2), which rallied to defeat defending national champion St. John Bosco on the North Shore on Sept. 16, trailed 21-7 at halftime but appeared to have all the momentum in the second half. It tied the game at 21 on a Tuli Tagovailoa-Amosa ball over the top to Diezel Kamoku for a 66-yard score late in the third quarter, followed by a 9-yarder to Kache Kaio in early in the fourth.
Then the Red Raiders stuffed McMillan short of the goal line, with 9:23 left as the “Red Sea” making up the majority of the stadium stands erupted.
But on Kahuku’s fifth play of the drive, running back Vaaimalae Fonoti fumbled on a hit by defensive back Brock Birgado-Gaspar and it was recovered by Tysic Puni at the Red Raiders’ 28.
McMillan needed only a 27-yard keeper and the 1-yard plunge to make Kahuku pay for the mistake.
Kahuku went three-and-out on three incompletions by Tagovailoa-Amosa.
Mililani had to kill 5:14 of clock to preserve the victory and did so with a 10-play drive. McMillan had a key 9-yard third-down pass to Derek Tsuchiyama to convert a first down, then an 8-yard scramble to convert again on third.
After Kahuku burned its last timeout with 1:19 left, the Trojans had a decision on third and 8 at the Kahuku 40 — run the ball and chew up more clock but almost certainly give Kahuku the ball back, or go for the knockout blow with the pass that carried the risk of stopping the clock on an incompletion.
York liked the matchup for junior slotback Onosai Salanoa, and encouraged McMillan to take a shot that way. He did, firing it to him near the right sideline — Salanoa drew the pass interference call on the Kahuku secondary for the game-clinching first down.
“I just knew that we needed the first down,” Salanoa said. “My quarterback called a back shoulder (route) and I just kind of ran into (the defender) to make him get physical with me, and just forced a PI.”
Salanoa caught a 25-yard touchdown ball with 12 seconds left in the first half. Tsuchiyama was also key for the Trojans before the break with TD grabs of 16 and 32 yards.
“We needed (McMillan) and he gave his all for us and that’s all we asked for,” Salanoa said.
Kahuku’s versatile star Kaimana Carvalho was held to a 31-yard first-quarter touchdown among his 36 rushing yards and just one catch. Tagovailoa-Amosa, a Kapolei transfer, was 13-for-25 for 193 yards and two TDs and no interceptions, plus 62 yards on 13 carries.
Red Raiders coach Sterling Carvalho tipped his cap to York, McMillan and the Trojans for playing the better game.
“He killed us with his legs,” Carvalho said of McMillan.” That’s always the X factor; if you look at what we did to Bosco, it was Tuli who won the game. Tonight, Kini won the game … he played great. So Mililani deserved this win; they owned the night.”
York couldn’t call it the junior’s best game. This season, McMillan’s had a five-TD, zero-pick performance against Saint Louis and an eight-touchdown — four passing, four rushing — effort against Waipahu.
For 2023, he has an absurd 38 touchdowns against four interceptions. For comparison, Gabriel had 38 TDs and 13 picks in 2018 when he led the Trojans to the OIA title and the state Open Division final and became the 2018 Star-Advertiser Offensive Player of the Year and Gatorade Hawaii Player of the Year.
Carvalho told his players afterward the loss was on himself. He was asked about Kahuku’s extensive time off — the team had a 21-day gap between games in October due to a forfeit by Leilehua and an OIA playoff bye — but he would not make an excuse. Kahuku was its usual self in a 49-7 semifinal win over Kapolei last week.
“We just didn’t execute when we needed to,” Carvalho said. “We couldn’t get them off the field when we needed to, and we couldn’t extend drives when we needed to. It was a combination of all that at the wrong time facing a great team.”
Kahuku’s state semifinal matchup with Punahou is a rematch of last year’s final won 20-0 by the Red Raiders for their second straight title and 10th overall.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.