UCLA Football Preview: Timmy Chang's Tenure at Hawai'i Has Been Unremarkable So Far

Plus, a look at the Hawai'i special teams.

Hawai’i Head Coach Timmy Chang is in his third season leading the Rainbow Warriors. (Photo Credit: Hawaiiathletics.com)

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For the past month or so, I’ve been having so much fun playing EA Sports College Football 25 as our beloved Bruins that it’s hard to believe we actually get to enjoy real football this Saturday. Winning three national championships in a row will do that to you. But that’s “fake football,” as my wife is fond of calling my favorite video game.

This Saturday, it’s time for the real thing.

The last time UCLA football faced Hawai’i was just a short three years ago, but a lot has changed for both teams since the Chip Kelly’s Bruins crushed Todd Graham’s Rainbow Warriors by a score of 44-10 in 2021.

For starters, Chip Kelly is gone! Feel free to let out some sort of exclamation about that right now. After all, UCLA football season is about to start and, for the first time in six years, the albatross has been lifted!

Hawai’i has changed their head coach since the teams last met. Todd Graham resigned in January 2022 amid allegations of player mistreatment. The Rainbow Warriors hired the team’s former quarterback Timmy Chang as his replacement just eight days later.

It was a very quick change for Chang. In 2021, he had been the wide receivers coach on Jay Norvell’s staff at Nevada and, in late December, he agreed to follow Norvell to Colorado State, but about a month later, he was hired to replace Graham.

Chang’s first two seasons have been disappointing. The Warriors posted a 3-10 record in his first season while they improved to 5-8 last year.

Last week, the team opened with a 35-14 win over Delaware State, an FCS and HBCU school which plays in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) alongside other HBCUs like Howard and North Carolina Central. For that reason, it’s hard to gauge whether the win is indicative of a substantial improvement by Hawai’i or not.

In addition to being the head coach, it looks like Chang will serve as the team’s offensive coordinator this season after Chang fired Ian Shoemaker following last season and he did not hire a new OC.

The Rainbow Warriors also have a new defensive coordinator this season. Chang has brought in former Dallas Cowboy Dennis Thurman who spent last season as a defensive quality control coach for Deion Sanders at Colorado. Prior to following Coach Prime to Boulder, he was his defensive coordinator at Jackson State where the Tigers’ defense was ranked in the FCS Top 10 in a dozen different categories. It looks like Thurman has implemented the Nickel as Hawai’i’s base defense, but I’ll discuss that more during our defensive preview later this week.

For now, let’s move on and look at the Rainbow Warrior special teams.

Special Teams

This year’s Hawai’i team features two new guys as the team’s kicking specialists and one returning player as the kickoff specialist.

Junior Kansei Matsuzawa joins the Warriors after playing the past two seasons for Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio. Those were his first two seasons of football after growing up in Japan where he was a three-year letter winning soccer player in high school. As as sophomore, Matsuzawa made 12 of his 17 field goal attempts, including a long of 50 yards while also converting 16 of 17 extra points. He was one of the ten best kickers in the Class of 2023 by Chris Sailer Kicking.

Last week in his first game for Hawai’i, he made all five extra points but did not attempt a field goal.

Matsuzawa will not kick off for the Rainbow Warriors. Instead, look for senior Ben Falck to handle the kickoff duties in addition to holding on field goals and PATs for Matsuzawa. Last season, he was the kickoff specialist in all thirteen of Hawai’i’s games and he averaged 63.8 yards per kickoff. His kickoffs went for touchbacks 62% of the time, 33 of 52 kickoffs.

Last week against Delaware State, he averaged 64 yards per kickoff and four of his six kickoffs went for touchbacks.

Australian Lucas Borrow comes to Hawai’i after graduating from Ball State with a degree in in criminal justice and criminology. While there, he had a career punting average of 41.3 yards on 133 punts with 47 landing inside the 20, including a long of 65 yards and he was named to the Ray Gay Award watch list in each of his two years as a starter.

Last week against Delaware State, he punted eight times and averaged 44 yards per punt. Two of his punts went for more than 50 yards including his long which went for 55 and three of his punts landed inside the 20. Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Timmy Chang’s offense opted to punt so much against an FCS team, but my immediate reaction is that it can’t be a good indicator of where the Rainbow Warrior offense is.

Sophomore wide receiver Tylan Hines is the primary return man for the Warriors. Last week, he returned all three of Delaware State’s punts including a 44-yard return for touchdown. Including that score, he averaged 20.33 yards per punt return. Meanwhile, he returned two of the team’s three kickoffs. His longest kickoff return went for 22 yards while the other was a 16-yard return.

Sophomore running back Cam Barfield who transferred from Boston College will lineup next to Hines on kickoff returns. Last week, he had one kickoff return but didn’t gain any yards on it. Hines certainly seems to be the more dangerous return man of the duo.


Go Bruins!!!

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