One of the best seasons a receiver has ever had in Hawaii quietly came to an end on Friday night.
Pac-Five senior Tsubasa Brennan, who unfortunately only had eight games to showcase his talents, was on the wrong end of a 42-28 loss to Damien at Aloha Stadium, ending the Wolfpack’s season at 2-6 overall.
Brennan, who played as a sophomore but didn’t win a starting job until his junior season, made the most of his opportunities in 2014, finishing with 88 receptions for 1,160 yards and 11 touchdowns. That comes out to an average of 11 catches for 145 yards and 1.38 touchdowns per game.
His 88 receptions fall nine short of the 97 by Punahou’s Miah Ostrowski in 2005. Gerald Welch had the best season by a receiver in 1999 when the Saint Louis senior had 96 catches for 1,689 yards and 23 touchdowns.
The difference there is Welch played in 13 games while Ostrowski played in 14 games. Imagine what Brennan’s numbers would have been with an additional five or six games.
Bruce Asato / 2012
Yes, Pac-Five throws the ball on almost every play, but the production the 6-foot-1 Brennan produced can not be ignored.
He had at least eight catches in all but one game this season. Kamehameha held Brennan to two receptions, but they went for 89 yards and a touchdown. His season-low in yards came in an 8-catch, 73-yard performance against ‘Iolani and he had nine receptions for 85 yards against arguably the No. 1 defense in the state in top-ranked Punahou.
Three of Pac-Five’s eight games came against Saint Louis, Kamehameha and Punahou and Brennan finished with 25 catches for 293 yards and two touchdowns in those games, showing he could still produce against the monsters of the league.
His 292-yard receiving performance against King Kekaulike in August is the sixth-best ever by a player from an Oahu school.
For his career, Brennan falls 35 yards short of becoming the seventh player to top 2,000 receiving yards. That almost surely wouldn’t have happened if Pac-Five’s season opener against Kalani as part of the Father Bray Classic wasn’t canceled due to weather.
Bad luck and an inability to beat Damien, which Pac-Five had done eight straight times from 2009 to 2012, kept Brennan from even bigger numbers. But his season can’t be ignored. The only players with more receiving yards in a season are Welch, Ostrowski, Kanawai Noa, Robby Toma, Shaydon Kehano and London Amorin.
That’s not a bad list to be a part of.
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