Aggie football to battle Warriors Saturday
It’s no secret to the college football world that Utah State can play with any team in the country. Unfortunately for the Aggies, their 2-5 record shows they can also lose to any team in the country.
The question for head coach Gary Andersen to answer as he heads to Hawaii to take on the 5-3 Warriors is: Which Aggie team will show up on the island?
Hawaii is undefeated at home this season, including a three-score victory of 34-17 over the Pacific-12 Conference’s Colorado.
On the mainland, however, the Warriors have their struggles. They lost to Western Athletic Conference rival San Jose State 28-27 and escaped from Moscow, Idaho, with a 16-14 win over the Vandals last week.
“Hawaii found a way to win,” Andersen said. “Offensively, it is not a typical scoreboard for Hawaii, they still threw the ball relatively well.
“There were opportunities missed by both teams in that football game, without question. Hawaii found a way to be able to win it at the end, which a good team does, regardless of where it sits,” he said.
The Warriors are led by senior quarterback Bryant Moniz, who averages 338 yards per game and has thrown 20 touchdowns.
Andersen said Moniz is the what anyone would want as a quarterback.
“Obviously, he can throw it real well,” Andersen said. “He can hurt you with his feet also, which he’s shown time and time again. He can do it all, he is the whole package. The other thing is he can live until the next down.
“He is patient enough to get to the next snap and say ‘OK, they did a nice job defensively we will come back and play the next down,’ which is another sign of a mature and a quality quarterback,” he added.
The 6-foot-tall Oahu native should have an easy time picking apart the USU secondary with the help of his eight receivers who have caught at least one touchdown apiece. Senior wide out Royce Pollard leads the Warriors in receiving, with seven touchdowns and an average of 14.9 yards per catch.
“Everybody is a big part of the offense in the throwing game,” Andersen said. “They are going to throw it like crazy. Hawaii is going to make plays at times, and you have got to make enough plays (defensively) to be able to get out of drives.”
With the up-and-down season Utah State has already had, the Aggies can only lose one of their remaining games to still be guaranteed a postseason bowl berth.
“We understand that we have been in some tough situations this year,” senior linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “It is never a good situation when you keep coming up short, but all of our guys are focused and we are ready to play and ready to get some more wins under our belt. We also know that we have a lot of games left. If we win them, we can still possibly reach our goal.”
Senior running back Michael Smith said the bye week USU is coming off of went very well for him and his teammates.
“We didn’t take it lightly,” Smith said. “We knocked some of the kinks out of our offense, and defense got prepared very well. We know we have a good opponent that we are facing this week in Hawaii. We put new wrinkles in our offense, but at the same time we are still running the ball as we planned from the beginning. We’ve just got to execute our assignments.”
Kickoff is set for Saturday, Nov. 5 at 10 p.m. MDT.
– tavin.stucki@aggiemail.usu.edu