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In one of the more improbable seasons in recent memory, the final week of football saw even more improbability leading to an incredible amount of speculation and drama about the national title game participants. LSU, true to their cat mascot, has used a chunk of their nine lives by getting their 3rd shot at the top spot, and this is the one that matters. Ohio State backed in by not having to play anyone for a month and a half (again) and will now have the looming specter of facing another SEC power on a national stage for all the marbles (that didn’t go so well last year). UGA was passed over and fell to the Sugar Bowl, cementing Richt’s 3rd BCS game in his 7 years in Athens. I never thought I’d see that day where UGA fans were disappointed to see us in the Sugar. We’ve come a long way.

Oh, and for the record, my spell check keeps insisting on putting the 2nd I in Hawai’i as capitalized, so for the purpose of this writeup, I will be removing said piece of punctuation. I hope in so doing I’m not offending any islanders. If I am, please take it up with Bill Gates and his anti-Pacific Islander programmers.

OK, in the classic words of the Road House poster, “The dancing’s over, now it’s time to get dirty…”

About the GT game

That game was a while back and frankly I’ve enjoyed the layoff from writing, but in the interest of consistency I’ll go back and try and remember some stuff. It was reassuring to see that our offense could still produce points against a stout D without Moreno being the driving force. It was nice to see Thomas Brown play well in his final regular season game as well. He’s been through a lot and deserved all the praise and recognition that came his way in that game.

It was a game that was odd to watch. Most every bounce seemed to go our way. Ultimately, our depth, better overall talent level and Gailey’s complete inability to coach a college QB widened the gap sufficiently so the outcome wouldn’t have likely been different, but there were some odd, odd plays early that could’ve gone either way. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two more horribly executed punt returns than the two we managed to turn into touchbacks. Those things were just brutal.

In the end there’s not much to say beyond the fact we handled another BCS conference opponent. Oh, and we beat Tech again. You pretty much have to assume the only reason Gailey was fired was because of his 0-6 record against UGA. He was more successful than any of their coaches in recent memory but, unlike O’Leary before him, he couldn’t pull off the occasional win against UGA. It was his demise…that and his complete infatuation with Reggie Ball.

UH Offense

The numbers of this bunch are pretty staggering. They lead the nation in scoring, averaging over 46 ppg. They sport one of the more prolific passing offenses in recent years, tossing it around for 450 ypg (2nd nationally to Texas Tech). They utilize the short passing game in place of the running game, so, as expected their running game stats aren’t incredibly impressive, averaging less than 80 ypg (113th nationally). This is a group that can put up numbers in bunches (obviously), although it should be noted that the 2 games they topped 60 were against 1AA teams (neither of which had a winning record this year). They’ve scored on everyone this year though, with their lowest output being 28 against Nevada, but that was a game that star QB Colt Brennan missed. We haven’t seen an offense like this all year so it should be interesting.

QB Colt Brennan holds a ton of NCAA records and his Heisman finalist season this year was the swan song of an interesting college career that saw him begin as a walk-on at Colorado before leaving amid scandal, landing at a JUCO and ultimately transferring to UH with 3 years to rewrite history. Last year was his most impressive season, where he set all kinds of yardage and TD records. This year he had to settle for 38 TDs (despite missing time in several games) to 14 INTs and an impressive 71.4% completion rate. He’s incredibly accurate and isn’t immobile by any means although he has battled an ankle sprain for chunks of this year. He’s not the biggest guy in the world. He’s listed at 6-3, 200 pounds but seems smaller (for the record, ESPN’s draft tracker lists him at 6-2.5 and 190). He often uses a side-armed release that contributes to my perception of his size (I guess). HC June Jones is convinced that Brennan will be a tremendously successful NFL QB. ESPN has him ranked as the #9 senior QB going into the draft.

At RB, freshman Kealoha Pilares leads the team in rushing with 362 yards on 61 carries for a solid 5.9 ypc. Brennan leads the team in carries with 73, but 20 of those are sacks, so he’s not the actual leading rusher, although he does average nearly 5 actual rushes per game. His long of the year is only 12 yards, but he does have 8 rushing TDs so you’ll have to watch him when they spread you wide down close. Aside from Brennan, their RBs have excellent numbers in terms of ypc, mostly because teams are keying on the passing game and they use a committee approach.