A year ago, Hawai'i came back from 10 points down and beat Stanford 23-20 when Kansei Matsuzawa hit a 38-yard field goal as time expired. That finish became the front door to a 9-4 season, Hawai'i’s first nine-win campaign since 2019 and one bookended by victories over Stanford and California.
Now the same matchup moves somewhere it has never been. This is the sixth meeting in the series but the first played at Stanford; the previous five were all in Honolulu.
Hawai'i at Stanford
Root for Hawai'i, Saturday, Aug. 29, 1 p.m. HST on ACC Network.
The model gives Hawai'i a 39% chance to win. That is underdog territory, but hardly miracle territory, and the payoff is meaningful even though this is a nonconference game. Hawai'i’s modeled chance to reach the Mountain West title game is 40.1% in the win branch and 34.2% in the loss branch.
The reason to believe starts at quarterback. In last year’s meeting, Micah Alejado completed 27 of 39 passes for 210 yards and two touchdowns. That is the most repeatable part of the comeback. Hawai'i returns the quarterback who already solved enough of this matchup to win it.
What is less settled is who completes the passing game around him. Pofele Ashlock caught nine passes for 69 yards and a touchdown against Stanford last season, but he missed the opening fall-camp practice with an unspecified injury and was called day-to-day, with no return date given. Hawai'i also must replace Jackson Harris’s 963 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns; the roster’s answer includes transfers Audric Harris, Carson Brown, Tre’ Griffiths and Devin Alves.
So watch more than the final score. If Ashlock plays, can his established connection with Alejado survive the venue change? If he is limited or absent, does one of the transfers immediately look ready for a central role? A road win would be another vivid Stanford moment, but a functional receiver hierarchy would tell Hawai'i fans something useful for the conference race that begins one week later.
The other result worth a little hope
Central Michigan at New Mexico: root for Central Michigan
Saturday, Sept. 5, 4 p.m. HST on FS1.
Central Michigan has only a 17% chance to win, so treat this as a fun upset watch, not a result Hawai'i needs. Its numerical impact is +2.0 percentage points in Mountain West title-game odds. Hawai'i lands at 38.1% in the Central Michigan-win branch, versus 36.1% if New Mexico wins.
This does not change the conference standings directly because New Mexico is playing a nonconference game. The value is informational. A Central Michigan upset would signal vulnerability in a Mountain West team Hawai'i hosts in Week 7. That is enough reason to check the score, not enough reason to organize the day around it.
The full set of modeled branches is in the interactive Hawai'i guide, with an explanation of the simulation and impact calculations on the methodology page.