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Hawaii head coach Greg McMackin knew Washington was going to throw some new wrinkles into their game plan this week.
It took too much time for the Warriors to figure out exactly what those adjustments were.
Before McMackin and the Warriors could blink, the Huskies had jumped out to a 21-0 lead in the first quarter. Hawaii fought back and got their spread attack going, but it was too big of a hole to climb out of as the Huskies held on for a 40-32 victory on Saturday.
Hawaii is now 1-8 in road games against BCS teams since 1998.
''We learned some things about ourselves, but I learned also that they're not going to quit,'' McMackin said. ''They're going to fight. They were down 21-0 and fought all the way to the end.''
McMackin knew Washington (2-0) was coming off a slow start to the season after squeaking out a 30-27 victory over FCS-champion Eastern Washington last week. He saw that Washington closed practices on Thursday and were fully expecting to see some changes from the Huskies' offense.
''I think Washington had a lot of frustrations wrapped up in them. I've been reading the papers too and the press down here and know how coaches are,'' McMackin said. ''...I knew they were putting in new stuff, but you don't know what they're putting in until you see it. They did a good job of shifting their people around and forcing our people to shift around. We have a lot of freshmen playing and it confused our guys in the first quarter, but we worked it out and made adjustments and played better the rest of the ball game.''
After a 1-yard touchdown run from Sterling Jackson put Hawaii (1-1) on the board, the Huskies were driving, looking to extend the lead back to 21 points midway through the second quarter. Keith Price made one of his only mistakes of the day trying to force a pass that was intercepted by Richard Torres and returned 99 yards for a touchdown to get Hawaii back into the game.
''I was trying to read (Price) and I saw the route develop so I just broke on it,'' Torres said.
But the Warriors could never overcome the early deficit and weren't helped by their own mistakes: two blocked extra points, one returned for a two-point conversion for Washington, and a fumble at the Washington 5 on their opening drive.
Hawaii quarterback Bryant Moniz finished 31 of 45 for 333 yards, but his running that was a threat last week against Colorado was absent. Moniz, who ran for a career-high 121 yards and 3 TDs against Colorado, was limited to two yards on nine carries. Washington used Cort Dennison as a spy to keep watch on Moniz and limited his running opportunities. He did score on a 1-yard plunge to cap a 14-play drive starting the second half, but was sacked twice.
''We played with a lot of heart and it was great to see that,'' Moniz said. ''No matter how much we were down, no matter how much time was left, we went all the way down to the last inch, that last second. It was a great game that we played and we've just got to go onto the next one and get ready for UNLV.''
Moniz was intercepted by Desmond Trufant with less than 5 minutes to go deep in Washington's end, but the Warriors defense held and Moniz hit Jeremiah Ostrowski on an 8-yard TD pass with 1:39 left. The extra point was blocked and returned 87 yards by Trufant for two points to give the Huskies a 40-32 lead.
''You always want to have a secure win. I think having the close games builds us as a team,'' Trufant said. ''We know we've been in the situations because we know we're going to play some great teams down the road and it's going to come down maybe to the last two plays. It's great preparation for that.''
The Huskies wore unique white helmets with the American flag embodied within the 'W' on the side of the helmets in honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
Washington QB Keith Price took well to the aggressive early play calling of head coach Steve Sarkisian and picked apart the Hawaii secondary. He hit Austin Seferian-Jenkins for a combined 77 yards on the first two plays from scrimmage and Chris Polk's 2-yard TD run came just 70 seconds after the kickoff.
Price added TD passes of 10 and 20 yard to Jermaine Kearse in the first quarter and finished the quarter 8-for-8 for 193 yards and two scores. By the time Price tossed his first incompletion with 12:30 left in the second quarter, the Huskies were already up 21-0 and had 266 yards of total offense, more than the 250 total yards they had in their opener. He finished with 315 yards passing and four touchdowns on the day.
Price tossed his fourth TD to Seferian-Jenkins, a 14-yarder in the back of the end zone with 10:02 left after Hawaii cut the Huskies' lead to 31-26.
''We definitely built a lot of confidence in these first two games,'' Moniz said. ''We played tough opponents. We played in a hostile environment today. It was very hard to hear and that's something we may not see for the rest of the season.''
