The UNI football team will make the lengthy trip this week to play Hawaii. The Panthers had last week off after a loss at Iowa and take on a Hawaii squad that is 0-2 after a loss to Oregon State. “The biggest thing to note about Hawaii’s offense is they had 104 plays last week, so if you look at it in comparison to the number of plays in our game against Iowa, we ran 60 plays and Iowa I believe ran 70 plays. In contrast, Hawaii ran 104 plays,” according to Panther coach Mark Farley.
He says the Hawaii offense wants to play fast and will be on the ball coming at you as fast as they can. Farley says the Panthers will need to adjust to Hawaii’s fast pace and be careful about how they call the defenses. He says you have to get a quick signal in so they can get lined up and be ready. Farley says it makes the defense more vanilla, and he says they should be able to do that, but haven’t experienced it yet this year.
Both schools have a connection to Stan Sheriff. He was the Panther’s football coach from 1960 to 1982 and led the program’s move from division 2 to 1-AA, then became Hawaii’s athletic director where the school’s basketball arena carries his name. “I think his wife is still out there and his son is in charge of the Stan Sheriff basketball arena,” Farley says. He say Sheriff did a lot in taking the football and basketball teams to another level.
Farley says the biggest issue when playing in Hawaii is to keep the players hydrated because of travel and the temperature will be warm on the field.
(Reporting by Elwin Huffman, KOEL, Oelwein)