LIHU‘E — With the Hawai‘i High School Athletic Association state football tournament looming, the Kaua‘i Red Raiders are doing all they can to prepare and stay in top form when they clash with a still undetermined opponent on Nov. 27.

That game will be played a full four weeks after Kaua‘i’s final regular season contest, a 45-0 win over Waimea on Oct. 30. The challenge now is keeping the team in game shape during this hiatus.

Head coach Derek Borrero is taking a more optimistic approach to the layoff, seeing it as a blessing for the team to get healthy and be at 100 percent once they take the field at the end of the month.

“We’re not killing them right now,” he said. “We’re using this time to heal our bodies. We’ve been a little dinged up.”

Borrero said the team and coaching staff has been spending a lot of time scrutinizing themselves over their final two games. He thinks the team was “slowly peaking on schedule,” something that may not have been the case last season. He felt the team peaked a bit early in 2008 and it showed in their playoff result.

While the coaches try to keep the team healthy, they are also trying to make practice sessions fun and mix up the workout schedule. Some days the team will practice with pads, some days — like Wednesday — they will just be doing power stretching exercises in the gym. With so much time, the staff feels that keeping each practice fresh is the best approach.

Though the Raiders were very impressive during their 9-0 season, they have still identified some flaws that they plan to focus on and correct.

On the defensive side, Borrero said that film sessions showed the team was missing too many tackles and was lining up incorrectly before the snap.

Offensively, the receivers need to focus more on their route running, while the offensive line has to more aggressively finish off their blocks.

“Even though we won the league, we weren’t perfect,” he said.

The level of focus and execution must be raised to match the opposition if Kaua‘i hopes to bring home a Division II championship. The team’s recent history has shown that winning the KIF does not signify postseason success.

“When you get into the postseason, there are no second chances,” Borrero said. “We learned that crucial lesson against Radford and Iolani.”

Kaua‘i was beaten in the first round of last season’s playoffs by Radford, 17-7. In 2007, the Raiders won their first-round game 40-9 over Roosevelt, before falling 35-21 to Iolani.

One definite difference about this year’s Raiders is the offensive approach the coaching staff implemented during the preseason. The team used new formations, including single and double-tight end sets, which had never been used before. Borrero said that the personnel made it possible to add more offensive formations. Players like Jamen Kealoha-Albarado, Puna Hanohano and Kalena “Boom” Rodero Workman, who have the ability to block, catch and run with the ball, have allowed the team to become even more unpredictable.

Because of this versatility, the team wants to increase its use of motion from the running backs and wide receivers. The goal is to confuse the defense and have them lined up incorrectly, making it easier for the offense to block.

Another new wrinkle the Raiders staff decided to use back in March was the no-huddle offense. They wanted to quicken the pace of the game and not allow defenses to properly adjust. The no-huddle makes it difficult for a defense to get plays called, to substitute and usually forces them to stay in a “vanilla” defensive formation, which can be easy to identify and exploit.

Coach Borrero suggested that much of the time, their version of the no-huddle didn’t pick up the pace as much as they had hoped. He felt that one reason may have been the referees’ unfamiliarity with the fast-paced attack. He indicated that in places where the no-huddle has been used more frequently, refs are more used to getting the ball spotted quickly.

Through their early-season struggles with it, Borrero said he was pleased to hear the kids voice their support for the no-huddle and that they wanted to keep using it.

The Kaua‘i coaches have been watching plenty of film on all their potential opponents. Borrero said they were slightly surprised to find out that Hawai‘i Prep was placed in the tournament. HPA was on Kaua‘i in the preseason and beat Waimea, 14-6.

“They gave Waimea a pretty good game, but we didn’t think much of them at the time,” Borrero said. “They looked small. But preseason is preseason. When we heard they won their division, we knew they must have done something right. They have great coaches over there, we’ve known that for years.”

The other potential semifinal opponent is No. 3 Moanalua. Borrero commented on its exceptional size on the offensive line and defensive line.

“They run the veer option to a T,” he said. “They also have a good play-action game going on.”

Borrero will be heading to Honolulu this Sunday as the head coaches and athletic directors of all 12 teams playing in the Div. I and II tournaments will be meeting with tournament officials. Some of the discussion will be about how money will be distributed, some travel details, what type of football will be used, as well as an opportunity for the coaches to meet and interact with one another.

For Borrero, this type of short trip provides plenty of excitement.

“I’m just a Kaua‘i boy,” he said. “But I get on that plane, I feel like big stuff.”