Hawaii Warriors Finish Training Camp, Begin Preparation for Colorado in Earnest

Honolulu, HI—The Hawaii football team wrapped up its 18-day training camp on Saturday with their biggest crowd to date in attendance. Nearly a hundred fans found their way to T.C. Ching Field for the unpublicized morning practice and viewed the team from metal bleachers overlooking the field.

Call them "Die-hards."

"It's great. (For them) to take the time out of the day to come check out our practice when they could be doing something else, it's wonderful," defensive tackle Kaniela Tuipulotu said after practice. "You can see the kind of faith that they have in us so that just makes us want to work harder to keep their faith in us and keep them coming back for more."

Senior strong safety Richard Torres said "it's real comforting to see that (everyone) is supporting us. It's really inspiring to know that we got something to play for, so we just can't wait to see them on September 3, (against Colorado)."

With only two starters returning for the Warriors on offense, head coach Greg McMackin has made it known that he expects a bigger, better and faster defense. Tuipulotu and Torres are two of McMackin's leaders on that side of the ball and against the Buffaloes he will find out if their hard work in training camp will pay off.

Torres believes it will.

"So far we're looking pretty good, towards the end of camp now you're going to see everything coming together, so it's looking like a nice picture," he said. "Everyday we're just trying to get better and from where we are now to where we started we made a big jump, a lot of improvement. So we're really excited (and) starting to get ready to play against (Colorado)."

Asked what they were able to gather from the full-speed scrimmage against the offense on Thursday, Torres said "it was just good being able to finally tackle. We've been working on a lot of our techniques on different (methods); tackling low, when to take certain angles, and whatnot. So in the scrimmage it was nice to see it and our coaches said everyone's been using the techniques right. So we just got to keep drilling it, keep drilling it, and then get ready for the game."

During his preseason WAC media day press conference, McMackin said that his two defensive tackles, Vaughn Meatoga and Tuipulotu, are two of the best in the country.

"I've coached some really good guys, Cortez Kennedy and Sam Adams, the point being I think these two guys are as good as anybody in the country," he said.

Knowing there are high expectations from McMackin heading into the season Tuipulotu is happy with where the team is.

"Right now I think we're exactly where we want to be," he said. "We're still working to perfect everything; make sure we know everything like the back of our hands, so when the calls come in we don't have to think about anything. It's just 'Bam...we line up and just get to work.' "

Against Colorado we have to "make sure we get our calls in and align correctly just in case they try to do the hurry-up. So just eliminate the panic and what happens when they do hurry-up on us, and just be calm and get the calls and play ball."