Mountain West Championship: Boise State Dominates Hawaii

Boise State 31, Hawaii 10

They did it! The Boise State Broncos not only won the Mountain West Championship, they also went undefeated on The Blue for the first time since 2014, as well as doing something no other Boise team had done, which is go undefeated in Mountain West conference play.

Amazing accomplishment for these hard-working young men, especially when I hear people saying things like this team isn’t as good as teams in the past. Well guess what, this team accomplished a number of things that those “better” teams were unable to accomplish!

Offense

The offense started out a bit slower in this one than they have been recently. Hawaii put the first points on the board with a field goal and Boise State answered with a field goal of their own. However, those were the only points on the board with just a few minutes left to go in the half. That’s when the Boise State offense turned it up, and decided to score two touchdowns in less than a minute of game time, to head into halftime with a 17 – 3 lead, and nearly put the game away there.

Quarterback Jaylon Henderson got off to a slow start, with one of the announcer asking at one point, “Are you surprised by what you are seeing?”  But like the rest of the team he quickly picked it up as the game went on. He ended up throwing for 212 yards, on 20 of 29 passing, with two touchdowns and one interception! Not bad for anyone in a championship game, especially for a kid who started the season third on the depth chart. Jaylon Henderson proved this year, he is anything but “third-string.” Also, did you see the outpouring of love for him (and from him) on Twitter? It was pretty cool.

The running game had another tough day at the tracks. George Holani carried the ball 16 times for a total of 67 yards, which isn’t a bad average, but that is not very many carries, and the second leading rusher was the QB with 51 yards. Other than that, Mahone had three carries and Van Buren had one as well. With those 67 yards, Holani now has 979 rushing yesterday in the year, meaning he only needs 21 more yards in the bowl game to keep Bose State’s streak alive of 10 years with a thousand yard rusher.

Defense

I cannot say enough about defense for this game! It would be easy to overlook their performance as just getting the job done, while the offense won the game, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This Hawaii offense put up 37 points, and 438 yards on Boise State the first time they met, and that was with Boise grabbing 4 turnovers.

As the first half went on, I was getting more and more worried about this game.  Knowing how easily Hawaii can score on offense, the fact that Boise was not scoring on offense, and no turnovers to speak of, was beginning to make it look like this game would be a nail biter.

But all that to say, that’s what was incredible about this defense. To give up 37 points before, and then turn around and only allow 10 points this game was remarkable! And that was with less turnovers as I said before, and a late touchdown coming from Hawaii after Boise State was already up big.

This Defense held the Hawaii Warriors to just over 300 yards total, keep them to 4 of 12 on third down, and 2 of 5 on fourth down, while also picking up an interception and a fumble recovery.  This is a Hawaii team that puts up a lot of yards and has no problem scoring.  Congrats to the line, the linebackers, the backs, and the entire defense for a great team performance!

Special Teams

First punt of the night sails squirrely sideways, out of bounds, giving Hawaii great field position. Oh great, if this how this night is going to go? Well, special teams really became uneventful after that first kick, with Velasquez averaging 43 yards per punt on his three attempts.  So perhaps the first kick wasn’t as bad as I, and the announcers thought?

If I’m not mistaken, I don’t believe we had a chance to return any kickoffs, I actually don’t think there were any kickoffs returns in this game at all. Two different punt returners totaled 9 yards of returns as well, so overall special teams was pretty uneventful. And while they may have not made any game changing plays, they didn’t make any game changing mistakes either, which many times is more important.

Final Thoughts

Another amazing team effort on The Blue! I could not be more proud of this team and what they have accomplished this year. From starting three different quarterbacks, to having a freshman take the reins of the backfield, plaguing injuries, as well as some adversity along the way, this team really showed the meaning of next man up, as well as the heart they play with.

Congrats to the coaches for an amazing coaching job this season (announcers believed it may be the best Coach Harsin has done).  Congrats to the entire team for working hard all year, and buying into the coaches plan. Congratulations to Jaylon Henderson for an amazing college football journey, and finishing it at home the way he did! And finally, congratulations to all the Seniors going out, on The Blue, with a bang!  We will miss you.

Here’s to going 1-0 in the Vegas bowl.

Hopefully I can find some airline tickets, and hope to see you all there!

Check out Broncosports.com to purchase your own tickets to the Las Vegas Bowl.