UNLV’s challenge: Contain Hawaii QB Greg Alexander

By Rob Miech

Friday, Sept. 18, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Hawaii senior quarterback Greg Alexander’s initiation into elite college football started at Florida last season and ended in a bowl game against Notre Dame.

They were bookends filled with blemishes. Against two of the game’s powerhouse programs, the Warriors wiped out, 56-10 in the former and 49-21 in the latter.

Alexander, however, has shown he learned a few lessons.

Last week at Washington State, the 6-foot-4, 240-pound senior riddled the Cougars’ defense for a career-best 453 yards and three touchdowns in Hawaii’s 38-20 victory.

It took only 20 minutes for the Warriors to score the game’s first 35 points.

No doubt trying to get to Alexander and limiting his production will be imperative for UNLV on Saturday night when the Rebels (1-1) play the Warriors (2-0) at Sam Boyd Stadium.

A few steps away from the Suncoast bowling alley late Thursday morning, Alexander said his first season of D-I football taught him that it’s a humbling game.

“You can have a good game, then the next week you can dog out and throw three picks and have a horrible game,” he said. “High school and junior college was all success. Coming here, you really hit some bumps in the road.

“You just have to stick with it and keep working.”

Alexander, 22, has done so in impressive fashion.

He is completing his passes at nearly a 70-percent clip, he’s third in the nation averaging 422 total yards of offense and he averages 11.13 yards per attempt.

That last figure slips him into an elite group, with Arkansas’ Ryan Millett (14.05), Miami’s Jacory Harris (11.35, before Thursday’s game) and Temple’s Vaughn Charlton (11.32).

Alexander defers to his talented receivers, led by junior Greg Salas. They’re running great routes, Alexander said, and gaining chunks of yardage after they catch the ball.

But Alexander’s maturation with Hawaii’s run-and-shoot offense is a major factor why the Warriors have fared well out of the gate this season.

“Obviously, when you start off, you’re lost,” he said of the complex passing schemes and reads. “It takes a lot of repetitions until, as an offense, you’re able to execute and be comfortable and perform at a high level.

“People have said it’s almost a two-year system. You’re gonna struggle your first year as a quarterback. The second year is when you’ll start seeing things and picking it up.”

He watched a few of Hawaii’s games, including the 41-10 Sugar Bowl defeat to Georgia, during quarterback Colt Brennan’s scintillating 12-1 season in 2007.

Alexander wondered what it would be like to play football for the Warriors in paradise.

“I knew a little about them,” he said, “but I wasn’t necessarily following them.”

Baylor had been a favorite to get Alexander out of Santa Rosa Junior College, but the Bears staff got sacked soon after a 3-9 season in 2007.

Bowling Green had shown some interest in the player JCFootball.com had rated as the best quarterback among 152 junior colleges in the country.

Hawaii assistant coach Ron Lee rang SRJC coach Keith Simons to inquire about another Bear Cub when Lee remembered that sturdy quarterback and asked about him.

That started Alexander’s journey to Honolulu.

New Warriors coach Greg McMackin had hired Nick Rolovich, who had seen Alexander play the previous two seasons when he was an assistant at the City College of San Francisco, to coach Hawaii’s quarterbacks.

That familiarity helped.

And McMackin vowed to continue Jones’s run-and-shoot style.

“It’s one of those things you watch on TV and think, It would be fun to play in that system,” Alexander said. “One, it was Hawaii. And the fact that they weren’t going to change anything, offensively, was one of the main reasons I wanted to come here.”

He started at Florida, going 11-for-21 for 57 yards. He threw two interceptions and was sacked three times. He did not start again until the ninth game, at Utah State.

The Warriors lost, 30-14, but McMackin — who had also used Brent Rausch, Inoke Funaki and Tyler Graunke behind the center — stuck with Alexander.

In the next three games, victories over New Mexico State, Idaho and Washington State, he was 59-for-90, for 867 yards and seven touchdowns.

Alexander has been Hawaii’s quarterback since that Utah State game.

“I just want to prove to people that we’d be capable of doing some good things in this offense,” Alexander said, “that it wasn’t just a one-time deal when Colt and those guys were here.”

Hawaii finished 7-7 with the defeat to Notre Dame at Aloha Stadium on Christmas Eve.

“Plus,” he said, “we didn’t perform well last year.”

In the run-and-shoot, Alexander usually is the Warriors’ lone run option. When his passing options dwindle, that can spell trouble for Hawaii.

In Hawaii’s final three games last season, he was sacked 18 times. That will be a priority, as it was with Georgia when it pounded Brennan in the Sugar Bowl, for UNLV.

“It’s going to be a tough game,” Alexander said. “UNLV will be the toughest team we’ve played so far. They’re fast, and they’re physical. Their corners are fast and physical. It’ll be a tough matchup.

“We’ll have to win with accuracy and running good routes.”

And a quarterback, thanks to some harsh lessons from Florida and Notre Dame, who has become one of the best in college football.