Liberty of Henderson took the hardest road trip in high school football this week, over the Pacific and into a storm window, to face the team the Honolulu Star-Advertiser ranks No. 1 in Hawaii. The Patriots, Nevada's No. 2, left John Kauinana Stadium with a 31-24 loss and the longest flight home in the sport.
Nobody should pretend this was a scheduling accident. Liberty booked this trip because Liberty wants these fights. This one turned on a second half the Patriots never showed up for.
| The night in numbers | |
|---|---|
| Hunter Fujikawa (Mililani, first start) | 20 of 34, 273 yards, 3 TD |
| Bless Cabrera-Hopkins (Mililani) | 8 catches, 148 yards, 2 TD |
| Ezra Sanelivi (Liberty) | 18 carries, 122 yards, 2 TD |
The kid making his first start beat them
Mililani handed the offense to Hunter Fujikawa, making his first start at quarterback, per the Star-Advertiser. He threw for 273 yards and three touchdowns on 20-of-34 passing, on a field the paper described as soggy, in his debut, against a Nevada program built for games exactly like this one.
His favorite target, Bless Cabrera-Hopkins, caught eight balls for 148 yards and two scores. When a first-time starter and his wideout carve up a Liberty defense, either the kid is special or the defense has questions. Watching the film, Mililani fans will tell you both can be true.
Here is the detail that will sting in Henderson longer than the score. The Star-Advertiser's game story has Liberty up 24-14 at halftime. The Patriots got outscored 17-0 after the break and never found the end zone again. They had this one, and they watched it leave.
Liberty ran it well and lost anyway
Ezra Sanelivi gave Liberty a real night: 122 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 18 carries. The ground game traveled fine. The problem was the second half, where Mililani kept scoring and Liberty stopped, and a team that came that far just to get on the field could not get the last stop.
Here is the honest Nevada math after one weekend. Four ranked teams on our board lost: the No. 3 in Salt Lake City, the No. 5 at home to unranked Churchill County of Fallon, the No. 2 on Oahu, and Faith Lutheran of Las Vegas in a game that needed two days to finish. Gorman, No. 1 in Nevada and No. 3 nationally, won, and even that took just half a game.
An asterisk with a coastline
Before anybody torches the Nevada rankings, note what these losses actually were. The margins: six in Salt Lake City, two at home, seven on Oahu against Hawaii's best on a field the rain got to first, and eight in a two-day game that came down to the last 76 seconds. Bad weekend, sure. Fraudulent board? The film says calm down.
SPIN publishes no Hawaii board, so Mililani does not have a number of ours to climb. What it has is a win over Nevada's No. 2, a quarterback nobody outside Oahu had heard of on Thursday, and the only win by a Hawaii team over a mainland visitor that anyone has verified this week.
Liberty has a bruise now, and a whole season to make it mean something.
