Greg Yamamoto | SL

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Saint Louis quarterback Tua Tagovailoa passed for 287 yards and three touchdowns in a win over Punahou. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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Sat, Oct 24, 2015 @ Aloha Stadium [ 7:00 pm ]

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Saint Louis

27

Punahou

23

Final	1	2	3	4	T
Saint Louis (9-2-0)	7	6	7	7	27
Punahou (8-2-0)	7	3	10	3	23

• Pass
• Rush
• Rec

Nick Kapule 201 yd 2 TD

Tua Tagovailoa 287 yd 3 TD

Wayne Taulapapa 106 yd

Saitaua Lefau 84 yd 1 TD

Ethan Takeyama 127 yd 1 TD

Jahvin Spear 77 yd 1 TD

HALAWA — It took a year's time, but Cal Lee has Saint Louis back on top in the ultra competitive Interscholastic League of Honolulu.

Tua Tagovailoa passed for 287 yards and three touchdowns, two to Saitaua Lefau, to help Saint Louis to a 27-23 win over Punahou and its first Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division I football championship since 2010.

A crowd of 10,478 fans at Hawaiian Airlines Field at Aloha Stadium was on hand for the title bout Saturday night.

"Well you've got to feel good about this because you see all the smiling faces on the players," said Lee, the winningest coach in Hawaii prep football history. "This is the first ILH championship for the seniors — this is the first one in four years — so you've got to feel real good for them. Everybody's smiling. It's like Christmas."

The Crusaders (7-1) dethroned the four-time league champion Buffanblu (8-2) by defeating them for the second time in a week to lay claim to the league's lone berth in the First Hawaiian Bank/Hawaii High School Athletic Association State Championships.

"It's a great feeling for the Saint Louis alumni, Saint Louis community; it feels good to give back to them the way I guess they would want it," Tagovailoa said. "All glory goes to God. Without God we would have never been able to pull through with this win."

Tagovailoa, a junior quarterback, threw first-half touchdown passes of 29 yards and 10 yards to Lefau and hit Jahvin Spear for a 3-yard scoring strike in the third quarter. Lefau, a senior who is listed as a wide receiver on the team roster, rushed for a team-high 84 yards on 21 carries and closed out the scoring with a 4-yard touchdown run.

"In the beginning it was kind of a rough start," Lefau said. "We couldn't really get anywhere but towards the middle of the game we kind of just adjusted and we did our best."

Quarterback Nick Kapule threw for 201 yards and two touchdowns on 15-of-29 passing and running back Wayne Taulapapa carried 22 times for 106 yards for Punahou. Jet Toner made field goals of 43 and 50 yards in the loss.

"Coming in, the preparation was no different for Punahou," Tagovailoa said. "We came out with the same schemes that we came with last week, but it's always a good challenge, especially playing Punahou when they're the four-time defending ILH champions."

Toner broke a 20-all tie with a booming 50-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter to give the Buffanblu their last lead.

Saint Louis' game-winning drive began at the Punahou 33-yard line after a pair of pre-snap penalties against the Buffanblu on fourth down, forcing Toner to punt from his own end zone.

The first three plays of the possession gained just one yard, leaving a fourth-and-9 for Tagovailoa and company.

No biggie.

Tagovailoa stood tall against incoming pressure and delivered an 11-yard pass to Noah Alejado to move the chains. Lefau then picked up 13 yards on a shovel pass from Tagovailoa and two plays later, Lefau scampered around left end for a 4-yard touchdown. Jacob Tobias tacked on the PAT — after some discussion between the two back judges — to put Saint Louis up by four points with 3:50 to play.

"We're more of a team that likes to be down because we like to be the underdog," said Lefau, who finished with five receptions for 58 yards. "We just came together as a team in the locker room. We prayed together and we just had faith in our team and what we were taught."

Punahou drove to its own 46 yard line in the closing seconds, but Kapule was intercepted by Ronson Timbreza to get the ball back to the Crusaders, who ran out the clock.

"We felt that this game was going to be hard, it was going to be tough but stuck as one and we didn't blame nobody. We just stuck as a brotherhood and just played as one," said Timbreza, who has recorded seven picks on the year. "It feels amazing because we not only made each other happy, we made the alumni happy, we made our fans happy, we made our families happy and we just shocked the state."

Punahou held a 10-7 lead after Toner's first field goal, midway through the second quarter, before Tagovailoa threw touchdown passes on consecutive Saint Louis scoring drives to put his team ahead, 20-10.

However, the Crusaders were penalized for holding in the end zone, resulting in a Buffanblu safety with 4:45 left in the third quarter. Just sixty-one seconds later, Kapule connected with Cole Arceneaux for a 13-yard TD pass to convert a 4th-and-11. The scored knotted the game at 20 after three quarters.

Saint Louis led at halftime, 13-10.