Schedule Has Soft Middle

SAN DIEGO —  Everyone knew the meat, muscle and monsters on San Diego State’s 1992 football schedule were at the top.

Get past USC, Brigham Young and UCLA with a respectable record, with particular emphasis on a victory at BYU, and the rest of the schedule would be crackers and cheese. That 1-1-1 start was certainly within respectable parameters.

In the aftermath, however, the Aztecs had been choking on those cheese and crackers.

They were offended when it was suggested that victories over New Mexico and Texas El Paso were less than impressive. A victory, they argued, was a victory. It turned that those efforts exposed a vulnerability that would haunt them.

Could this team really have lost to Air Force and Wyoming?

It did. Beating BYU and losing to those guys was akin to Riddick Bowe coming back in a month and getting knocked out by Danny DeVito.

And so it came to pass that the biggest game of this year, an absolute must victory to keep hopes for any bowl alive, was Saturday night’s date with Hawaii. The odds against such an occasion in, say, August would have been about the same as the odds against winning the super lottery.

Hawaii, you see, simply doesn’t play big games in anything but surfing and beach volleyball. It has been so non-competitive in Western Athletic Conference football that you wonder if it’s only in the conference to be an expense-account vacation destination for administrators.

However, in this crazy year, the Rainbows--yes, dahling, they are called the Rainbows--came to Mission Valley ranked 24th in the nation and perched atop the WAC. SDSU, that erstwhile juggernaut, desperately needed a victory to move back into a tie for first and gain the tiebreaking advantage in the race for a Holiday Bowl bid.

And Hawaii, of all teams, was in position to cinch a return trip to San Diego to the Holiday Bowl . . . if only it could win this biggest game in its athletic history.

Unfortunately for those ‘Bows, SDSU finally remembered it was in the WAC. Those 20-17, 20-13 and 17-6 games aren’t WAC games. They are either Big Ten or NFC East games. There’s no “D” in WAC.

The Aztecs let it all hang out. They turned Marshall Faulk loose. They turned David Lowery loose. They turned Darnay Scott loose. They even turned DeAndre Maxwell loose. They turned Hawaii every which way but loose.

It was a WAC score: 52-28.

This big victory against this most unlikely opponent begets another game of equal consequence. The Aztecs will go to the Holiday Bowl if they defeat Fresno State, a WAC rookie, next Saturday night.

Look for the losing team to score in the 40s in that one. Fresno State has been a quick study in WAC etiquette. It has had scores of 46-36, 39-37, 47-45 and 42-31 . . . and won only one of those games.

Bring ‘em on.

The WAC is back in the SDSU attack . . . and mentality.

The Aztecs had 675 yards in offense, 300 of it from Faulk rushing and 345 from Lowery passing. Faulk ran for four touchdowns, the first coming on a 68-yard run, and Lowery passed for the other three. Scott caught seven passes for 132 yards and one touchdown, naturally a spectacular grab between two defenders. Maxwell only caught two passes, but both were for touchdowns.

Indeed, the secret to getting this offense into gear is the defense.

When the defense plays well, the offense doesn’t. Let the defense let it get into a shootout and the offense awakens. More points were scored in the first half, 45, than in any of the Aztecs’ previous three games. The lead had changed hands six times with the Aztecs leading 31-28 with 9:40 to play in the third period.

It was shoot ‘em out and shoot ‘em up time.

Maxwell, so often the odd man out in this offense, caught a 36-yard scoring pass with 58 seconds to play in the third period and a 47-yard scoring pass with 2:28 gone in the fourth period. It was suddenly 45-28.

Deep in a crater created by SDSU’s suddenly volcanic offense, Hawaii tried to pass like it was BYU and run like it was Air Force. It only succeeded to imitate the latter . . . and only on one play. It gained 21 yards on a fumblerooski, which is getting to be the gimmick of choice against the SDSU defense. Fresno State may run its guards on every play.

It was timely in this biggest of games that the Aztecs got it into gear. They were just all mixed up. It has turned out that USC, BYU and UCLA were just the appetizers, the warm-ups for the entrees of this schedule.

They have feasted on Hawaii and now Fresno State and, ultimately, Miami are on the menu.

That’s a murderer’s row. That’s meat and muscle.

OK, maybe not Miami. Don’t even think about those guys. Don’t even worry about those guys. Just score 50 against Fresno State . . . and cross your fingers it’s enough.