STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Micah Ford scored his third touchdown on a 2-yard run with 1:41 to play and Stanford rallied after nearly blowing a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter to beat Hawaii 37-27 on Saturday in the first game under new coach Tavita Pritchard.
“It’s been a theme throughout our entire early goings together through the offseason, in the spring, up until training camp is how we finished,” Pritchard said. “We finished tonight.”
Davis Warren threw for 310 yards and one touchdown in his debut for the Cardinal and engineered the game-winning drive after Hawaii had scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to turn a 23-7 deficit into a 27-23 lead.
But instead of the biggest fourth-quarter comeback in school history, the Rainbow Warriors fell just short of beating the Cardinal for the second straight year in the season opener with the final attempt at a comeback ending when Micah Alejado fumbled and Tevarua Tafiti returned it 31 yards for the game-sealing touchdown.
He went 22 for 34, committed no turnovers and set a career high in yards passing. He threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Atticus Joseph and set up Ford’s first two TD runs with long passes, connecting on a 57-yarder to JonAnthony Hall and a 48-yard deep strike to freshman Zion Robinson to the Hawaii 4 on Stanford’s first drive of the second half.
He then went 5 for 5 for 58 yards on the game-winning drive.
“I’m just happy that we have a quarterback that can lead us through that and stay poised in that type of situation because it’s definitely not easy,” Ford said.