Maui Scrimmage: Photos and Reports

Chawan Cut has a couple hundred photos from today's practice and scrimmage at Maui's War Memorial Stadium. Here are a few of them:





The Star-Bulletin's Jamm Aquino has several excellent photos on The Aperture Cafe blog.

Stephen Tsai has some photos as well.

Jason Kaneshiro has some notes from the game.

>> Most of the established starters on offense — Greg Alexander, Greg Salas, Malcolm Lane, Kealoha Pilares, John Estes among them — sat out the scrimmage, which followed an hour of practice. There were two touchdowns scored in the scrimmage.

>> Inoke Funaki was one of the big performers. He scored on a 22-yard run behind the right side of the line and later turned a shovel pass into a 31-yard gain.

>> Quarterback Shane Austin enjoyed a solid day. He hit Rodney Bradley for a 48-yard reception on his first throw of the day.

Dave Reardon did a play-by-play on Twitter and has some notes on his Quick Reads blog.

Shane Austin looked great at times today.

Quarterbacks coach Nick Rolovich said this about him:

“He’s on time, he gets rid of the ball. He was in some good situations, and after they see the tape, they’ll make adjustments.”

***

Inoke Funaki made a beautiful 31-yard run on a shovel pass, and a 22-yard touchdown run. At the end of the TD, the 190-pound Funaki leveled 200-pound safety Rykin Enos two yards in front of the end zone.

Definitely the katoosh of the day.

An anonymous commenter in the last post shared some observations:

Shane Austin had a great scrimmage should be the #2 QB. Shane completed more passes with very nice reads and throws with precise bombs that the receivers dropped that could have gone for TD's. Shane seems very comfortable while in the pocket and scrambled nicely avoiding several sacks.

Our defensive front rarely penetrated the OL, so either the OL got better or defense got a lot of work to do.

I say overall it was a good scrimmage with the defense giving up just 14 points to run plays. 2 TD's and a 2 point conversion.

Funaki will be a huge threat this year for sure!

Some fan notes from SportsHawaii.com as well as WSN here and here.

And HawaiiAthletics.com has a wrap-up.

“It was an excellent effort by our guys today,” McMackin said. “We kept a lot of our starters out of the scrimmage and it allowed us to get a good look at our other players. People were making plays on both sides of the ball and I thought the crowd brought out the best out of our guys.”

Senior running back Jayson Rego, who hails from Wailuku, drew the biggest cheers with a series of bruising runs, including an apparent touchdown scamper. The touchdown was called back by a holding penalty, but it was fun experience none the less for the Maui native.

“I can’t really explain how good it was,” Rego said. “I haven’t been home for a long time and being able to play in front of all the people I used to play in front of when I was a little kid, was a great feeling. I enjoyed it a lot and I know the fans really enjoyed it too.”