Following the Hawaii football team’s final home practice in advance of Saturday’s road opener against Colorado State, UH head coach Nick Rolovich was ready to talk smack.
“You’ve got to expect to be punched in the face when you go into one these football games,” said Rolovich, whose team was scheduled to depart Honolulu on a direct flight to Denver on Wednesday evening. “We have to have the resiliency to bounce back.”
Rolovich said the Rainbow Warriors showed that mettle on Wednesday, a day after a difficult practice. “Today was a really good practice,” Rolovich said. “Yesterday wasn’t. This team shows it has a little bit of bounce back. That’s important.”
Cole McDonald, a third-year sophomore, and Chevan Cordeiro, a true freshman, split the reps during the two-minute drill. Cordeiro directed a scoring drive punctuated with Ryan Meskell’s 41-yard field goal.
“Sometimes you get to kick it, sometimes you don’t,” said Meskell, an Australian who had never played American football until joining the Warriors in July 2017. “I feel so much more confident this time around. Most of my kicks have gone through. That’s what you want.”
The Warriors have prepared for playing a Mountain West Conference game on the road. The league limits member teams to a travel roster of 70 players. The Warriors are not using all the travel slots. To offset not traveling with several scout players, the second-team players were used to simulate Colorado State’s offense and defense this week. The Warriors will use the same formula when they practice today and Friday in Colorado.
“There’s some NFL mentality to it,” Rolovich said, a reference to the NFL’s smaller rosters.
This training camp, the Warriors have run gassers — sideline to sideline sprints — each practice in anticipation of playing in the breath-taking 5,003-foot altitude in Fort Collins, Colo.
“We ran ‘em every day,” Rolovich said. “We practiced fast. We practiced hard. I think they played themselves into shape pretty well. … They’ve got to get over that gasp when they get winded up there. They have to fight through that. You know you’re going to get punched in the face with that (altitude). We fought through it at Air Force (in 2016). It’s a mental thing.”
Left guard J.R. Hensley, a co-captain, said the Warriors should be ready for the elements.
“Of course,” Hensley said, noting high altitude is as much a deterrent as “humidity here in Hawaii. It’s the same difference. I think we’ll be used to it. … It was fast-paced practices this week. We’ve been flying around a lot more. We’ve been doing a lot more conditioning at the end of practice. I think everybody will be ready to go.”
