Georgia sends Hawaii packing

NEW ORLEANS -- Last year’s Western Athletic Conference champions used a hook-and-lateral play to help pull off a stunning upset in a major bowl.

This year’s WAC champions just got an early hook.

Boise State over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl gave hope to upstarts who thought they could script similar endings, yet Hawaii found out the hardest way Tuesday night that sometimes the bigger and better teams are just bigger and better.

Hawaii met an unsentimental opponent at the Sugar Bowl, in the Superdome. The villain wore black and grunted with a Southern drawl.

Georgia overpowered Hawaii, 41-10, reaffirming the Southeastern Conference’s preeminence as an unrelenting football machine while disappointing thousands of green-clad Hawaii fans who traveled five time zones only to discover their time was up.

“We just couldn’t get any rhythm, get anything going,” Hawaii Coach June Jones said. “Georgia has a lot of good players.

“You can’t miss a beat and keep pace with them.”

Reality bites sometimes, and the Bulldogs bit hard.

There was no way to Sugar Bowl coat it -- and sometimes it was better if you looked away.

In the third quarter, Georgia defensive end Marcus Howard, rippling at 6 feet 2 and 235 pounds, raced by helpless Hawaii offensive tackle Keoni Steinhoff, 6-3 and 282, on his way to quarterback Colt Brennan’s sternum.

Howard’s jarring hit forced a fumble into the end zone, with Howard falling on it for the touchdown that extended Georgia’s lead to 31-3.

Aloha.

Hawaii, averaging 46 points, scored a season-low 10.

Brennan, ending a brilliant career with a miserable night, was sacked eight times. He also fumbled twice and threw three interceptions.

“We wanted to force Colt Brennan to throw it faster than he wanted to,” Georgia Coach Mark Richt said. “We really didn’t think we would get that many sacks, but we thought we could make him have to throw the ball quickly.”

Brennan completed 22 of 38 passes for only 169 yards. The NCAA’s all-time leader in touchdown passes, with 131, was held without one.

“It’s not the way I wanted to end my career,” Brennan said. “Life’s not fair. I got my taste of life’s not fair.”

Georgia defenders came so fast at Brennan he didn’t have time to throw deep passes; he barely had time to throw short ones.

If speed kills, then it killed Hawaii.

“We’ve got a few players on the field with that kind of speed but not 11 players,” Jones said of Georgia.

Brennan added: “The SEC is probably the fastest conference in all of college football, and we got a firsthand taste of that.”

Brennan was knocked groggy one last time with 13:42 left, then escorted off only to watch Tyler Graunke, his backup, throw his team’s only touchdown pass.

“I took one in the mouth today,” Brennan said. “Luckily there’s always tomorrow.”

Sometimes it takes a few series to get a feel for the matchup -- this one took a few seconds. It seemed obvious after Hawaii went three and out on its first possession and Georgia scored easily on its first foray, on freshman tailback Knowshon Moreno’s almost effortless 17-yard touchdown run.

Hawaii scrambled back for a field goal, but soon Moreno was scampering again, streaking like Herschel Walker on an 11-yard romp.

Georgia added a field goal to make it 17-3 and then, after Prince Miller intercepted a Brennan pass at the Hawaii 29, the Bulldogs made it 24-3 when Bulldogs receiver Sean Bailey beat Myron Newberry to an end-zone corner and then fell under quarterback Matthew Stafford’s pass.

Hawaii was 2-0 in games this year when it trailed at the half, but there was no coming back from this.

The Warriors had been adept at staging comebacks.

They rallied from a 14-0 deficit to beat Louisiana Tech, in Ruston, La.

They came from behind at San Jose State, trailed late at Nevada and won, and spotted Boise State a third-quarter lead.

On Dec. 1, the Warriors recovered from 28-7 down against Washington to cinch an automatic BCS bid.

The Bulldogs’ victory was emphatic and perhaps impressive enough to warrant preseason No. 1 honors in 2008. Georgia finished 11-2, following its seventh straight win, with many of its devoted wondering why their “Dawgs” didn’t get a chance to play in this year’s BCS title game.

Hawaii’s season ends at 12-1. Jones said Monday that, in his 44 years as a player and coach, he had never been a part of an undefeated team.

He still isn’t and, if you take Georgia into account, really didn’t come close.

Sometimes a Boise State comes along and throws what’s supposed to happen for a loop. You get craziness like a game-ending Statue-of-Liberty play followed by an on-the-field wedding proposal.

And sometimes you get the inevitable and, in hindsight, the obvious.

Georgia trounced Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl.

What else was supposed to happen?

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com