PUKALANI — Frank Abreu didn’t mince his words when it came to what he thinks of Saturday night’s unbeaten showdown between his Kamehameha School Maui football team and Lahainaluna.

The senior wide receiver/linebacker for the Warriors has never been on a team that started 5-0. Lahainaluna is 2-0 in its wildfire-delayed season and has won 41 Maui Interscholastic League games in a row.

Because the game will be televised on Spectrum OC-16, kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. at War Memorial Stadium.

“I mean, we’re just treating it like a championship game, honestly,” Abreu said at practice on Tuesday. “Just how we treat every game and just everybody has got to do their jobs. Just a regular game to us.”

Lahainaluna hasn’t lost to Kamehameha Maui since Aug. 22, 2015 when the Warriors won the first-round game between the two, 11-7. The Lunas have won 12 straight in the series since, including a hard-fought 21-14 victory last year.

The game will not count in state qualification for the MIL Division I Lunas and Division II Warriors, but it will mean supremacy in the MIL with two weeks left in the season.

Abreu recently committed to a scholarship to play football at the University of Hawaii, but he is not done yet in Pukalani. He and quarterback Makana Kamaka-Brayce have connected on 21 touchdown passes and nearly 2,000 yards in their three-year varsity careers.

Both are school record-holders in all of their major career categories.

“I mean, it’s great, also we’re in the same grade, so it’s good to build chemistry and, just, it’s a great time overall,” Abreu said. “I just met everybody in high school and it’s just a great opportunity. He’s a great player to play with. I will miss this whole team next year.”

Kamaka-Brayce was the MIL Offensive Player of the Year as a sophomore on a team that advanced to the D-II state final for the first time in school history. He is relishing his final month of regular-season play in high school and knows that the Warriors have a crucial state berth-deciding game against King Kekaulike in two weeks.

“It’s awesome, it’s not my goal to be the stat leader, but it just comes along with it — I have super-good receivers surrounding me and I just get it in their hands and they do the rest after that,” Kamaka-Brayce said. “Me and Frank, we’ve been playing with each other since sophomore year, even freshman year when we were playing the flag league just because of COVID.

“So, we’ve had a long time to build that connection and even working in the off-season on our own. We kind of know where we are on the field at all times. I’m going to miss him a lot, way too much.”

The Warriors have built a run game as well this season and four players — Zedekiah Campbell, Kaikea Hueu, Teiva Kauhaa-Po and Aka Abihai-Phillips — have run for more than 80 yards in a game, topped by freshman Hueu’s 140-yard outburst two weeks ago in his first varsity game.

Campbell is one of four Kamehameha Maui players from Lahaina, a group that also includes Nohi Casco, Pa’ani Yap and Shane Ueki.

“It’s super awesome, you know, it helps me in the passing game,” Kamaka-Brayce said of the run game. “Being able to run the ball, it opens everything up. Our O-line is super young and they’ve progressed insanely fast. I’m super proud of them.”

Kamaka-Brayce is also relishing the chance to play the Lunas coming off a bye, as the Warriors are.

“I mean, it would mean everything,” Kamaka-Brayce said. “With the bye week we had a lot of time to watch film on them and just kind of get our bodies right. We had some injuries here and there and the bye week helped us prepare because they’re a super physical team.

“We’ve got to play it like it’s a championship game.”

Kamehameha Maui coach Ulima Afoa said he is taking the game as he does all of them.

“We don’t try to make it anything more than just the fact that it’s our next game, you know what I mean?” Afoa said. “I think it’s one of those things that sometimes you can make things too big and then you can kind of talk yourself out of it. So, we’re just trying to keep an even keel and say, ‘Hey, look, we don’t worry about the people that we play. We have to play to a standard.’

“That’s what we try to keep our focus on, playing to the standard. We know that we’re playing a good team and obviously that’s going to be part of the thought process, but we’re trying to emphasize: ‘Just, hey, you’re going to have to line up every week and beat whoever you play.’ ”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.