GameDay: Hawaii at Boise State

Stephen Tsai's gameday preview has breakdowns of both UH and BSU's offense, defense and special teams, along with probable starting lineups.

Here's a game preview from Todd Dvorak of the AP.

Jason Kaneshiro has some pre-game notes.

Tsai has an article about yesterday's walkthrough on the Smurf Turf, and talks to Jim Donovan about Brent Rausch's reinstatement.

From Brian Murphy of the Idaho Statesman, the Broncos are all about revenge.

It's as if every question contains these four words: Hawaii. Defending. WAC. Champs.

They're a constant reminder that the Broncos didn't finish last season, that they have an empty spot in the trophy case and an empty finger for a ring.

"We're so used to being the WAC champs. It kind of pisses me off," Boise State linebacker Kyle Gingg said.

That seems to be the general feeling around the Broncos this week. Anger. Resentment. A sense that something that rightfully belongs to them has been taken away.

BoiseStateFans.com has another preview about the revenge factor.

And another one from Dustin Lapray of the Times-News.

From another BoiseStateFans.com preview, here's an excerpt discussing the atmosphere at Aloha Stadium last year:

I’ve covered my fair share of Boise State football games, and I must say, I’ve never seen an environment like the one last season at Aloha Stadium.

Boise State walked into one of the most hostile stadiums — yes, even more hostile than Autzen, Sanford and Bulldog stadiums — in recent memory and for most of the game, hung tight with last season’s Bowl Championship Series darling.

But let’s face it, Boise State was beaten by a better team when Hawaii took away a chance at another Western Athletic Conference title.

Bart Hendricks of IdahoSportsZone.com has some thoughts about the game.

Like probably all of us watching, I am still waiting to see a run game. But am I kept up at night because of it? No. The O-line is young, still working towards getting better, and have a great coach to get them there. Look at a positive; Moore is getting the time to operate and when he doesn’t occasionally slip into playing like the freshman he is the ball gets thrown everywhere. So maybe we have come to expect such dominance that even a small win is no longer a good enough. Nice problem to have.

Speaking of the Broncos young O-line, Dave Reardon writes that the Warriors must attack them.

But the offensive line remains somewhat shaky, and this is the weakness Hawaii must exploit if it is to win for the first time on the blue turf. Yes, the Broncos are full of all kinds of tricks to deal with blitzing defenses, but Greg McMackin still needs to roll the dice and go for big plays on defense to have a chance.

The foolios over at OBNUG have some riDONKulous predictions and more silly words.

When Boise State is on defense, the Warriors had just better pray for a horribly blown assignment or that little lightning box that appears in Mario Kart to make everyone else really small and slow. Other than that, Inoke Funaki can’t pass well enough to keep the Broncos from stacking against the run. And with Ellis Powers spying on Funaki’s bootlegs and scrambles, the Hawaii offense should be in shackles all night.

The intrepid journalists over at FreakCrazy.com just may have the scoops on Boise's new turf, rendering my jokes obsolete!

“We were tired of people making fun of our turf calling it ‘Smurf Turf.’ It was degrading and disrespectful. Smurfs do not play on this field. Short blue cartoon characters do not play on this field. So we are now changing it to orange because nothing rhymes with orange. No one can make immature nicknames for our field.” Stated Boise State coach Chris Petersen.

“How would you feel if somebody called your coach Papa Smurf and called your starting quarterback Smurfette?” said starting Bronco running back Ian Johnson. “Enough is enough and with this orange field no one can hurt our feelings any more because there are no cartoon characters associated with the color orange.”

And Ferd Lewis write about all the other improvements being made to the stadium.