HONOLULU — Who’s still in?
After another crushing game in which the Hawaii football team competed and did not see its efforts rewarded, that’s what coach Timmy Chang and quarterback Brayden Schager demanded to know.
The Rainbow Warriors rued mistakes at crucial moments and lost to No. 17 Boise State, 28-7, in a game they felt was winnable until the final few minutes at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex on Saturday night.
[Note: See below for more photos of Boise State-Hawaii.]
UH (2-4, 0-2 Mountain West) was in the game most of the way against the defending champion Broncos (5-1, 2-0), long considered the class of the league, in front of the second sellout crowd of the year at the 15,194-seat venue.
But disappointment and frustration have become prevailing themes at the halfway mark of the 2024 season.
Chang and Schager separately stepped to the postgame podium and called out the team as a whole.
“This is when we find out, who’s in? Who’s in?” said Chang, whose team dropped to 0-4 against FBS opponents this season and 6-22 for his three-year career. “Who wants to represent Hawaii? Who wants to represent Hawaii football? And so, if you have any of those guys (who don’t), you quickly, immediately get rid of them.”
Schager, the four-year senior who was sacked a season-high eight times, was tired of talking about how well UH hung in there, only to experience an all-too-familiar result.
“We continue to leave a lot of points on the field,” Schager said. “I’m going to come up here and say it’s my fault every time. But at the end of the day we’ve got to have guys step up and we gotta win man coverage. I gotta get protected and eventually I gotta make those plays.
“I’m going to continue to challenge those guys in the room to look yourself in the mirror and see how you want to finish these last six games,” he continued. “I need dogs in there and I think we need a mindset switch. You need to play harder.”
Defensive lineman Elijah Robinson said he was all in.
“We have six more games. We’re going to win out. That’s just what it is,” Robinson said.
On Sunday, BSU rose to No. 15 in the Associated Press poll after another impressive performance by its Heisman Trophy candidate at running back, Ashton Jeanty.
Jeanty amassed 217 yards on 31 carries and caught three passes for 20 more yards. He showed his blend of speed and physicality with a 54-yard touchdown rumble in the first quarter.
Despite yielding its most yards to a running back since 2021, UH felt it actually did a good job on him for most of the night — the long run excepted. It stacked as many men in the box as it felt it could get away with, though that contributed to opportunities for receiver Cameron Camper (seven catches, 111 yards) and Austin Bolt, who put away the game with a 44-yard catch-and-run on a play-action pass with 3:39 left.
“Over time, I think we ensured that it was hard-fought runs by him, as we tried to put all 11 bodies on him. A great player,” Chang said.
But BSU extended its mastery of UH in the series to 10 straight, and five in a row in Honolulu. The unbeaten 2007 regular season remains the last time UH prevailed.
Jeanty’s 7.0 yards-per-carry average on the night was well below his rate of nearly 11 entering the game and UH held the nation’s leading scoring offense entering the night to a little more than half its usual output.
“He made his plays, but we went into this game knowing that as long as we do our jobs, and we are where we’re supposed to be as a collective, we’re untouched,” Robinson said.
Bottom line, Jeanty worked hard for his yards, but he got them — and became BSU’s leader in all-time 200-yard rushing games with five.
“Proud of Ashton Jeanty. He’s an absolute war daddy,” BSU coach Spencer Danielson said. “He’s the best player in the country. … It was tough yards. That’s the No. 1 ranked defense in our conference for a reason. Those guys flew around, had a great plan of attack. He just kept battling, kept battling.”
Schager found starting running back Tylan Hines for a 27-yard pass late in the second quarter for UH’s only score of the night, but that was enough to keep UH in it at the time down 13-7 at half.
A critical overturned call on an apparent fumble by Jeanty early in the fourth quarter was a demoralizing blow that quickly became a decisive one against the Warriors, who immediately gave up a 5-yard touchdown pass from Maddux Madsen to Jeanty when play resumed.
BSU completed the 2-point conversion on the play for a 21-7 lead.
“There must’ve been some really good evidence to overturn that one. But that’s a tough break,” Chang said. “We’re still in there, 13-7. Stopped them right there and think we’re going to get the ball on the 6-yard line.”
UH had only three drives in the second half, with two long ones that consumed a combined 13 minutes, 44 seconds while producing no points.
The first was undone by an untimely false start that forced UH to punt after it was about to go for it on fourth down in Broncos territory. On the second, UH, despite an intentional grounding call on Schager, advanced to the BSU 6 thanks to Schager’s 12-yard keeper and followed by a 12-yard connection with Jonah Panoke.
But from there, Schager absorbed a sack and UH had another false start. Facing fourth and goal from the 19 and needing a touchdown down 14 with under six minutes left, Schager’s toss to Panoke in the end zone was broken up the by the Broncos.
UH’s drive the other way advanced into the red zone, where it sputtered with an untimely intentional grounding call and false start. With under six minutes left and UH needing a touchdown, BSU snuffed out Brayden Schager’s desperate toss into multiple coverage in the end zone on fourth down.
The Broncos put the game away on fourth and 1 in UH territory as Madsen tossed a play-action pass to receiver Austin Bolt, who shed a tackle and went in from 44 yards.
Schager went 21-for-36 for 264 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions. By exceeding 8,000 career passing yards, he surpassed Cole McDonald for fourth on the UH all-time list.
In the second quarter, UH’s top receiver Pofele Ashlock took a hard hit that drew a targeting call on BSU’s Alexander Teubner. Ashlock’s participation was limited after that; he drew only four targets for the game and caught three passes for 42 yards, far below his usual output.
“It’s tough losing a guy like that, especially when all they want to do is play man coverage and blitz six people,” Schager said. “Just gotta have somebody that can win, and obviously he can do that, he’s proven it. And we’re just going to have to practice harder and push those guys in the receiver room to step up and make some plays for us as a group.”
The Warriors had three straight drops on their first drive of the game. Nick Cenacle led UH with seven catches for 59 yards.
The ground game was limited to a gain of 69 yards, with Schager taking off multiple times to produce 55 of them. However, his cumulative losses from the sacks were 50 yards and UH netted a season-low 15 on the ground.
“I gotta look at it and see if there’s throws to be made, protections to be made, routes to be ran,” Chang said of the sacks. Jayden Virgin-Morgan had 2.5 of them and Seyi Oladipo 2.0 for BSU.
The Warriors got the Broncos to go three-and-out on their opening drive of the second half, but a roughing the kicker call allowed BSU to extend the drive.
UH defensive lineman Ezra Evaimalo was ejected in the first half for a targeting call, while safety Peter Manuma exited after getting hurt on the first punt of the game. Chang said Manuma went to a hospital to be checked out and “everything came back negative.”
UH was assessed 11 penalties for 95 yards compared to seven for 62 for BSU.
“Untimely penalties,” Chang said. “Guys are trying to make plays. They’re costly.”
Kicker Kansei Matsuzawa missed his only field-goal attempt from a season-long 39 yards.
Play was paused for about 15 minutes in the second quarter when a game official experienced a medical episode. An ambulance was summoned on the field and the official was able to board it himself.
UH gets a reprieve from Mountain West play next week, but only because the Pac-12 negotiated a scheduling alliance to play MWC teams for one season before turning around to raid the league for five teams, including Boise State. The Rainbow Warriors will head to Pullman, Wash., to take on Washington State (5-1).
WSU’s only loss was against BSU on Sept. 28.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.