One arm, one leg all Brennan needed to dazzle

The Hawaii quarterback was slow to get rolling. But once in gear, Brennan began piling up yards like donated dollars, on his way to yet another memorable night in a storied college career.

The 6-foot-3-inch, right-handed senior picked UNLV apart with surgical precision, spraying the ball all over Sam Boyd Stadium and finishing with 298 yards on 26-for-32 passing and two touchdowns while guiding No. 24 Hawaii to a 49-14 victory.

And he did it on one leg.

Brennan sprained his right ankle before Friday’s practice and, after being injected with a painkiller, he went out and dominated the Rebels.

“I can’t feel my leg right now,” he said. “I’m sure when I wake up, my ankle will be fat and black and blue.

“But I wasn’t missing this game. No way. I had over 100 family and friends here and I wanted to come out and make a statement.”

Did he ever.

It was the 29th time Brennan passed for at least 200 yards, breaking the NCAA record of 28 games by Texas Tech’s Cliff Kingsbury. Brennan also ran for three touchdowns before calling it a night after three quarters and the Warriors comfortably ahead, 42-7.

“We had a week to prepare and all we did was sit in a hotel room (in Houston) and game-plan for UNLV,” Brennan said. “There was nothing else for us to do, so we knew we would be ready and we knew we had the advantage.

“We expected a four-quarter battle. We got down 14-0 last week (against Louisiana Tech) and we didn’t panic. We had a good game plan and we just stayed with it.”

With 11 NFL scouts and one Canadian Football League team watching along with a sellout crowd of 38,125 — including a substantial number clad in Hawaii’s green and white — Brennan didn’t disappoint. The Heisman Trophy candidate seemed to be in control, even when UNLV briefly took a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.

Brennan finished off three scoring drives with quarterback sneaks of 1, 1 and 3 yards, and he even allowed his running backs, David Farmer and Kealoha Pilares, to carry the ball once in a while.

But it is Brennan’s right arm that was the reason the scouts showed up en masse. His ability to get the ball to his dazzling array of speedy receivers — on target and in stride — had UNLV’s defense under duress virtually the entire game.

The fact the Rebels managed to get Brennan to go three-and-out on Hawaii’s first series was more an anomaly than a sign of normalcy.

If there was any solace for UNLV, it was that by holding Brennan to 298 yards, the Rebels snapped his personal 14-game streak of passing for 300 or more yards.