Game Week: SJSU - Thursday News

Stephen Tsai has a great article about the UH special teams. Here's an excerpt about the "head-hunters" on the kickoff unit, Richard Torres and Spencer Smith:

Smith and Torres are the bookends on the kickoff unit. They play the positions known as the head-hunters. Their primary role is to seek out the kick returner.

Smith is 5 feet 11 and 200 pounds. Torres is 5-7 and 165. Both have to blast through man-made wedges of blockers.

"I don't know if they love what they do or if they're completely insane," kicker Dan Kelly said. "I like to think they're insane. I've never seen people hit a wedge like they do."

Smith said: "I don't think I'm crazy. I'll take 'hard-worker' over crazy. I try my hardest every time. That's why I get labeled 'crazy' by Dan."

Jason Kaneshiro writes about the possible extension of the UH-UNLV series and takes a look at the blocking duties of the UH running backs.

"First and foremost you've got to know who you have. Second, is just being tough," Farmer said. "It's positioning and a lot of strategy and knowing where to make contact and hit the guy.

"Anyone can go out there and hit, but that'll only get you so far. A good defensive end will swim you or make moves. You've got to be smarter and adjust to it and use more technique rather than sheer force."

Matthew Kimel of The Spartan Daily has a game preview.

Hawaii will be putting numerous streaks on the line in this week's game.

The team has won 15 consecutive Western Athletic Conference regular season games, nine straight games at home and has not lost back-to-back games since 2005.

UH announced that Ford Island will not be open for parking for this Saturday's game.

"After evaluating the cost for the use of Ford Island for the Weber State game, we have decided that it is not economically feasible to use it as an alternate parking site unless the attendance warrants it," University of Hawai'i Athletic Director Jim Donovan said. "It cost the department close to $18,000 to park approximately 650 vehicles and shuttle those passengers. We are not ruling out the use for the entire season. We will determine use on a game-by-game basis depending on the ticket sales on Mondays of game week. We anticipate an attendance of approximately 37,000 for this week's game against San Jose State."

Ferd Lewis laments the anticipated attendance.

If that crowd estimate holds up — and you hope there might be sufficient walk-up sales to boost it to a respectable 40,000 — it would, indeed, be sad.

Here the Warriors would be just two games into their 2008 home schedule and but four games removed from the Sugar Bowl appearance and attendance would be flirting with 35,000? How huge a step back from 2007 would that be?

In happier news, the work on Cooke/Ching field has been cleared to proceed.

The contract of $862,381 was awarded by UH on Aug. 13 to RMY Construction, Inc., the lowest bidder, to install a new synthetic playing surface. A few days later CO-HA Builders Inc., and Ching's Nursery filed protests.

Prior to the protests, construction was to begin in August and be completed by Oct. 31.

UPDATE: Errr, not so fast.

Ching's Nursery Inc. is weighing whether to appeal a decision dismissing its protest of a contract awarded to resurface the former Cooke Field at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Hearing officer Sheryl Nagata dismissed the protest Tuesday because Ching's Nursery, doing business as Service Contracting, did not submit its protest within five working days of the contract award.

"I think the university is still in violation of various contract laws, so we're looking into it to see if it's worth pursuing," said Gifford Chang, a vice president of Hoonai Subcontracting, a company that would assist Ching's Nursery with installing the synthetic playing surface. Chang represented Ching's Nursery, the fourth-lowest bidder, at the hearing.