The University of Hawaii football team sure surprised a lot of people by leading Boston College for most of the minutes on Saturday. But there are two ways to finish a college football game these days: You win or you lose.
And the Rainbows unraveled at the end to allow the bigger and more-talented Eagles a chance to slip out of town with the gift-wrapped victory.
Boston College head coach Dan Henning must be conceding that this will be his last year at anything higher than the Pop Warner level.
Despite his offensive linemen outweighing the Hawaii defensive linemen by an average of 30 pounds or so, he comes out throwing instead of running - and obviously with the wrong quarterback.
Sophomore Scott Mutryn played like he forgot to put his pants on, firing the ball like a rocket with little accuracy and missing open receivers all over the lot, especially in the first half.
Luckily for the Eagles, the dim bulb in Henning's head finally came on late in the game and he sent in junior QB Matt Hasselbeck to pull it out.
Fortunately for UH, Henning prepared and coached his team like a boob. If he had lost, I wouldn't have blamed the good Jesuit fathers for canning him while he was still over the Pacific Ocean on his way home.
On the other hand, the new Hawaii coaching staff members showed that they are on top of the game - and it is already a huge difference from the last regime.
FRED vonAppen had his team at just the right emotional level and his emphasis on discipline showed throughout the game.
When is the last time you can remember a UH team playing an entire half without a penalty?
There was actually this thing called precision on offense, especially on the line, and Guy Benjamin mixed the plays beautifully from the sideline.
Glenn Freitas showed how tough he is early in the game when he shook off vicious back-to-back shots. Overall, Freitas played a good game, bouncing back well from the early interception near his own goal line.
On the down side, the UH running game is a liability and some of the trick plays that bailed it out are now on game films. But overall the Rainbows' new offense was encouraging.
Don Lindsey also did an excellent job on defense, mixing things up enough to keep the big, but slow, Boston College linemen plodding around like misdirected cattle for much of the game.
The UH secondary showed perhaps the biggest improvement from the past several seasons. And I thought that the late penalty call on Al Hunter, which set up the Eagles' winning field goal, was borderline at best.
I can never understand why referees call a loose game, but then have to get in on the action by making a high-profile call at a crucial time.
The UH special teams were good and bad - and gave up a huge play on Boston College's long punt return just before the half, which led to the score being 14-10 instead of 14-3.
The fans? I'm surprised more than 35,000 didn't show up. For all the complaining they did about the last coaching staff, you would think they would have come out in bigger numbers to support the new crew.
The ones who did come out, though, saw a fired-up UH team and responded with a classy ovation at the finish.
Still, the ending of this new UH production was seriously flawed. Despite all of the local media bouquets being tossed to vonAppen and his staff, the Rainbows still lost when they should have won.
And to a football-savvy staff like this one, blowing a game at the end is unacceptable any way you look at it.