HONOLULU \u2014 Two weeks out from the 2025 season opener, the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex took on more of a game-like setting Saturday.<\/p>\n
Flags \u2014 the yellow, punitive kind \u2014\u00a0flew as a crew of Mountain West Conference officials stood at attention over a Hawaii football scrimmage.<\/p>\n
UH coach Timmy Chang expressed gratitude to MWC Commissioner Gloria Nevarez and the league\u2019s associate commissioner of football, John Sullivan, for making the officials available.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we played our last full-on tackle type of scrimmage setting,\u201d Chang said, \u201cbut it’s scenario football all the way through and get ready for Stanford (Aug. 23).\u201d<\/p>\n
First, the crew met with UH on Friday to go over a handful of emphases this season, including crackdowns on feigned injuries, roughing the quarterback, pre-snap alignment and pass interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen we got to sit down with them and talk story and get to get some clarification on whether it’s new rules or how they’re looking at the game and how they’re how they’re trying to ref, and what they’re being told,\u201d Chang said.<\/p>\n
As an example of the emphasis on alignment, Chang said, \u201cIf you’re really tight on top of another receiver, covering them up, that makes you ineligible. And so they want to be clear on who’s on, who’s off, but they communicated that really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first-string UH offense got some work against the second- and third-string defensive units. Starting quarterback Micah Alejado found the end zone on a couple of occasions, an inside route to Pofele Ashlock in the red zone and a deep ball to open tight end Devon Tauaefa after some chaos in the backfield.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve been off for six months and haven’t played a game with real officials, so (it was) just seeing where our team is at, actually,\u201d Alejado said. \u201cAnd you know, it looked good. It was good to get those calls and get those errors that we made today. So we need to get it fixed before another two weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials are being told to crack down on hits to a quarterback\u2019s knees or head.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re trying to protect us a lot. And you know, I appreciate that, but at the end of the day, it\u2019s football,\u201d Alejado said. \u201cI’m going to get hit at some point in the game. And I gotta expect the hit, so I’m gonna be ready and let the refs ref the way they ref.\u201d<\/p>\n
Afterward, nickelback Elijah Palmer, who has taken up a leadership role for the defense, spoke to the entire team about cleaning up mistakes.<\/p>\n
The officials provided running feedback to the team between plays, sometimes administering a warning where a penalty could\u2019ve been called. UH made sure to get in special teams work \u2014 kickoffs, punts, point-after attempts and field goals \u2014 under the officials’ watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chang said his staff has a firm grasp on the team’s depth chart, which has yet to be released.<\/p>\n
“We know who we like, and who we want to represent us on Saturday, but we need to get everybody ready,” he said.<\/p>\n
In a new policy, Chang said the Mountain West will have its members disclose injuries on the Thursdays and Saturdays of MWC game weeks.<\/p>\n
Brian McInnis<\/a>\u00a0covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.\u00a0He can be reached at\u00a0brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU \u2014 Two weeks out from the 2025 season opener, the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex took on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[14147,1615,1613,32840,318,7,9104,9,1004],"class_list":{"0":"post-276298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-app-college-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-brian-mcinnis","12":"tag-college","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-hawaii","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}