Hawaii Football Throwbacks: Air Force

Today’s potentially pivotal Mountain West matchup between Hawaii and Air Force could be the latest in a series of close battles between the Rainbow Warriors and the Falcons throughout their history, which stretches back to 1966.

Nine times in a 21-game series have UH and the AFA played within a touchdown of each other.

In today’s edition of the Throwbacks, we’re focusing on one of those typical nail-biters for the Kuter Trophy — Nov. 26, 1988. The Rainbow Warriors were charmed this time, making an improbable play late in the game to pull out a 19-14 victory and continue what the Honolulu Advertiser’s Ferd Lewis described as a “magical season.”

Air Force rolled into the matchup having won the previous four meetings against the Rainbow Warriors, including the last three by margins of seven, seven and three points.

UH had opened the 1988 season with a 27-24 win over No. 9 Iowa at Aloha Stadium. This was the penultimate game. UH was coming off a 28-22 loss at No. 16 Wyoming the week before.

A turnstile crowd of 38,486 was on hand as UH struck first on Chris Roscoe’s 40-yard touchdown reception from Warren Jones. That helped stake UH to a lead of 10-0, and 13-7 going into the fourth quarter. But the Falcons came back with Greg Johnson’s 4-yard touchdown run to take a 14-13 lead.

With Air Force looking to put the game away with a lengthy drive, up a point with the ball at the Hawaii 5 in the final minutes, something amazing happened. Two relatively unknown players turned the tide.

Defensive coordinator Rich Ellerson had called for an all-out blitz on the Falcons’ wishbone offense.

Linebacker Joaquin Barnett — getting a chance while spelling ailing inside ‘backers Mark Odom and David Maeva — engulfed a handoff in the AFA backfield, forcing a fumble on Falcons backup quarterback Lance McDowell, who got slammed from the back.

“I was keyed on the quarterback and went for it. His back was turned to me, and he was just about to hand off to the back. … I got ’em both,” Barnett recounted afterward.

As the Advertiser’s Dave Koga wrote, “You are Joaquin Barnett, 6 feet 1 and 233 pounds, big, strong, fast and mad.

“You are Joaquin Barnett, and you be a dangerous man.”

Cornerback Robert Lan, himself a backup pressed into duty, snatched the ball out of midair, running it back 91 yards with a three-man escort for the go-ahead score with 3:02 remaining.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Lan, who’d been called for a costly 15-yard roughing-the-kicker penalty earlier in the game. “Things like that just don’t happen. … I just kept running and running and running. And the field just kept getting longer and longer and longer.”

As Lewis noted, it channeled the 1980 result between the teams when Blane Gaison collected an airborne fumble and returned it 29 yards for the winning score against Air Force.

Said the AFA quarterback McDowell of Barnett, “I saw him coming. He just shot through and got to me. It just happened so fast.”

Air Force was left rueing the result, as they outgained UH by nearly 100 yards and possessed the ball for nine more minutes. Coach Bob Wagner acknowledged, “We were fortunate to win.”

UH improved to 8-3, at the time its most wins since the 1981 squad went 9-2. This capper to the WAC season moved UH into a tie for third at 5-3 with BYU. The Warriors would go on to beat Oregon 41-17 in the season finale the following week.

Fisher DeBerry’s Falcons ended the season with this game on a five-game losing streak after starting 5-2, sealing a losing season for the first time since 1981. DeBerry, the longest-tenured coach in Air Force program history, went 23 years at the helm and lasted through 2006, when he turned over the reins to current AFA coach Troy Calhoun.

Here’s PDFs of the next day’s combined Honolulu Advertiser/Star-Bulletin:
The_Honolulu_Advertiser_Sun__Nov_27__1988_
The_Honolulu_Advertiser_Sun__Nov_27__1988_ (1)