Eighth-ranked Lahainaluna will take on No. 11 Konawaena with a spot in next Thursday's Division I state final on the line. The last time the teams faced off was in the 2017 D2 title game, when the Lunas hung on for a wild 76-59 win over the Wildcats after seven overtime periods. CJ Caraang | SL

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By their own coach's admission, the Konawaena and Lahainaluna football teams have overachieved this season. 

With identical 6-0 records, that could certainly ring true in the case of both the Wildcats and the Lunas, who will cross paths Friday afternoon in a semifinal game of the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA Division I State Championships at Farrington's Edward ‘Skippa' Diaz Stadium. 

The winner of Friday's game will advance to next week Thursday's state title game. The last time that Konawaena and Lahainaluna faced off, it was in the 2017 Division II state final — which resulted in a historic seven-overtime game that saw the Lunas hang on for a wild 76-69 win in a shootout with the Wildcats. 

"The kids are getting excited now," Lahainaluna coach Dean Rickard said. "They realize the gravity of this game and that in order to advance, you gotta be prepared and I think it's starting to set in that they worked hard all season long so this is the payoff, so they just gotta go out there and give their one-hundred percent and especially after the long layoff, they're excited to be back in the postseason tournament."

The Lunas captured the Maui Interscholastic League Division I title in their first season up from the D2 ranks. They have won 31 consecutive games in league play dating back to the 2016 season. But that almost came to an end in each of the Lunas' final two MIL games this fall —a 26-9 win over Maui on Nov. 27 and a pulsating 29-22  which also happens to be the two games that Rickard believes have proven to be most beneficial for his squad. 

"Those games really showed us that it doesn't matter what the win-loss record shows, or what they rank us because the MIL has always been a league of two seasons, so we always tell the players to ‘don't listen to anything going on and don't believe what you hear about how good you guys are because Baldwin and Maui High will come back in the second round and be a different team," Rickard said. 

That was especially true of the Bears, who held three different leads in the second half only to see Lahainaluna score the go-ahead touchdown on quarterback Noa Gordon's 2-yard run with one minute and 57 seconds to play. 

"They brought the house and it was another tough battle," said Rickard, whose team had already locked up the MIL title and the lone state tournament berth the week prior with their victory over the Sabers. 

"We found ourselves behind, trailing on several occasions with the lead changes and in the last four minutes of the game we were able to take our last possession and march it down the field and I think it's a testament to the kids and their commitment to dig down deep and face adversity and overcome it and we were able to get the win and head to the postseason with a six-and-oh record, which gives us some momentum, but we still got things we gotta work on, which the bye gave us an opportunity to do, so it came at a good time," Rickard added. 

Like their counterparts, the Wildcats are also coming off a bye last week; their last game was a narrow 13-12 win over No. 12 Hilo on Dec. 3 at Julian R. Yates Field in the Big Island Interscholastic Federation championship game. 

With its victory over the Vikings — their second such of the season — Konawaena ended Hilo's string of seven consecutive league titles. That probably wasn't likely in the mind of coach Brad Uemoto back in August. 

"We're very surprised because we lost seven to eight very big contributors, we lost three coaches that were there for a long time, so coming into the year we didn't know what the players filling in, we didn't know their potential, or how well of a team we could put together just with new pieces and a lack of experience, but we're so young as well," Uemoto said. 

The Wildcats have a dozen freshmen and a half-dozen sophomores on their varsity roster. 

"We're starting a bunch of freshmen and sophomores we haven't seen play a lot and some probably never even got a lot of JV experience, so they all came in and they all stepped up. They filled the shoes of the kids that left and I think nobody really looked back on anything; the whole promotion to it was that, ‘hey, kids have left, coaches have left, but the reality is now it's your turn' and the people that are left were the ones that held on and wanted to stay and we kind of developed a nice family atmosphere around that group," he added. "We all believe in this one thing and we all stuck around for it, so nothing left to do but go for the championship."

Uemoto's group opened the BIIF regular season with a head-turning 24-21 win over Hilo back on Oct. 22. He said pointed to that victory as the most beneficial for the team. 

"Just in the sense that we really didn't know walking into that first game if we were gonna lose by fifty, win by fifth, go to overtime and win by a field goal, or overtime and lose by a field goal, so I think in a sense it sort of placed us right there in the league, but even though we won that game we presented it (to the players) as if Hilo could have won that game as well," Uemoto said.

Konawaena is led offensively by sophomore quarterback Keoki Alani, who has thrown for 1,464 yards and 20 TDs with seven INTs, but Uemoto noted the contributions of junior running back Kawelu Kaiawe (805 rush yards, 10 total TDs). 

"He just runs the ball hard and he really allowed us to be a lot more balanced than we usually are offensively and so we have a decent run game with him," Uemoto said. 

The defense is anchored by a pair of seniors in free safety Kamaehu Makanui and defensive lineman Maui Ellis Noa; the pair also play wide receiver and running back, respectively, on offense. 

"(Makanui) just provides so much athleticism for us on both sides of the ball. He's got good football IQ and he's just that prototypical two-way player that we usually see year in and year out," Uemoto said. 

He called Ellis Noa the ‘emotional glue' to the team's success this season. 

"He's our leader and just kind of that heart of our defense," Uemoto said. 

The Wildcats average north of 41 points per game, while opponents have been held to fewer than 12 points per contest. 

"We're a young team, we're inexperienced, I feel like we overachieved and we're just really happy to be in this position, to be BIIF champions and to have the opportunity to play in this state tournament against Lahainaluna," Uemoto said. "We haven't been here for a few years so it's a whole new group. Sometimes to be successful at the state tournament you need some state tournament experience and obviously we don't have any, but I think it's gonna be a really good opportunity for these kids and I really like the position we're in where there's no pressure on anything, we're just gonna go out there and play football and do our best and see what happens."

Rickard described his Lahainaluna team in much the same way. Given the loss of the 2020 prep football season — and what would have been a senior-laden Lunas' team last — Rickard's players have risen to the occasion this fall. 

"This team is kind of overachievers in a sense that they came in without that experienced of being mentored by a pretty good senior team coming back from the 2019 season to the 2020 season before it was canceled, so this group has not really had that leadership mentors to carry them into this season so that was something that we had to try and instill in them to come up as leaders," Rickard said. 

"But these kids showed that they're dedicated, they committed themselves and I think they moved forward from the hard work they put in only to see the (2020) season canceled last year. We were fortunate to go undefeated and if you ask me, they deserve everything to be where they're at, to be competing for the D1 championship. They worked hard and I'm very proud of this group actually, considering that they didn't have the seniors to look up to coming into this season," he said. 

The Lunas have allowed only 10.5 points per game on defense, which is led by a pair of senior hybrid linebackers in Noa Arase and Shaun Kana, who double at receiver and running back, respectively. 

Offensively, they share the load between a number of running backs, including junior Ian-Jay Cabanilla (566 rush yards, 5 total TDs, 10.3 yards per carry) and senior Blare Sylva-Viela (181 rush yards, 6.5 ypc). The duo also play on defense in the secondary as cornerbacks. 

"A lot of these guys that we really count on are two-way players, but most are skill position two-way players. They're just a couple of the seniors who have really stepped up as the catalyst for the on-the-field leadership and those are the guys who will set the pace moving into our game against Kona Friday because they're the ones who have the experience of playing in a big game, but other than that we got a lot of first time young kids that, for them, this will be the biggest game that they'll take part in," Rickard said. 

Like the Konawaena, Lahainaluna has a sophomore at quarterback in Gordon, who, just as Kaiawe does for the Wildcats, brings another dimension to the Lunas offense. 

"We're kind of excited with what we see in our young quarterback; He's proving to be very smart," Rickard said. "We're not really known as a passing team, but he brings that dimension to our team and he's only a sophomore."

Rickard isn't sure if Friday's matchup will be a high-scoring affair like the 2017 edition, but he is sure of the effort that the Wildcats will bring with a spot in the D1 state final on the line. 

"We expect a tough battle, as it has been in past games that we played them," Rickard said. "We know they're well coached and they got a tradition of championship teams in football, so we'll be in for a battle and that's what we told the kids: we expect a tough battle."

Lahainaluna is No. 8 in the ScoringLive/Hawaiian Electric Power Rankings, while Konawaena is ranked 11th. 

Kickoff between the top-seeded Lunas and fourth-seeded Wildcats is scheduled for 3 p.m.