AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. >> The video of last season’s 58-7 thumping by Air Force — it was hard to call it a “game” — was so bad that Hawaii defensive coordinator Kevin Lempa refused to look at it in preparation for Saturday’s game.

“I said, ‘I’m not gonna watch it,’” Lempa recalled, his face taking on a sour contortion at the mere thought of it. “I knew that’s not who we are.”

But you can bet the 2016 version, a drama-packed 34-27 double-overtime Rainbow Warrior triumph over the Falcons, will get plenty of viewing in the UH video library.

In it the ’Bows made an emphatic statement about who they are with a 58-point turnaround in less than 12 months against the stunned Falcons, the second-biggest season-to-season reversal in UH history.

Not since 2001, when the ’Bows, with a quarterback named Nick Rolovich passing for three touchdowns, went from a 39-7 defeat in 2000 at Texas-El Paso to a 66-7 victory over the Miners at Aloha Stadium in 2001, has UH reversed its fortunes by a larger margin against the same opponent over back-to-back seasons.

This one, coming as it did at 6,621 feet in the Rampart Range of the Rocky Mountains, a place where UH last won in the Holiday Bowl season of 1992, propels the ’Bows back into a bowl possibility at .500 (4-4 overall, 3-1 in the Mountain West) with five regular-season games remaining.

In 12 months these ’Bows have gone from being roadkill and seeing their head coach fired the day after the 2015 loss to Air Force to becoming trophy hunters, standing at midfield at Falcon Stadium chanting, “Where’s the trophy?…Where’s the trophy?” in recognition of taking back the Gen. Laurence S. Kuter Trophy that goes to the victor in the series.

That Air Force, a 17-point favorite, hardly imagined the possibility of having to hand the trophy over became evident when employees had to be dispatched across campus to the football offices to extract it from the trophy case more than an hour after the game.

“We’re not getting on the plane (home) without it,” Rolovich vowed.

“The key, the biggest difference, for this team is that they believe in each other, they really do,” Lempa said. “They trust each other to make a play or cover for the next guy if something goes wrong.”

And there were challenges aplenty in this one where Air Force ran 97 plays to UH’s 63 and consumed 34 minutes, 42 seconds of the clock to 25:18 for UH.

At one point, from the start of the fourth quarter to the first series of overtime, Air Force ran 34 plays to UH’s 10.

But the ’Bows, the defense most especially, picked themselves up time and again. “Even when we had a three-and-out on offense, the defense was telling us, ‘We’ll get ‘em,’” said quarterback Dru Brown, who bounced back from two early interceptions to author three touchdown passes and a 312-yard game on 21-for-37 passing.

“It is tough for the defense being out there six, seven, even eight minutes sometimes, but they never got on us or pointed fingers saying ‘We only got three plays off,’” Brown said.

Even with a rotation, defenders were worn like pencil stubs, battered by the Falcons’ ground-hugging infantry. “Some of these guys — (Damien) Packer, Jahlani (Tavai), (Dejaun) Butler and Trayvon (Henderson) — played nearly 100 plays,” Lempa said. “That’s remarkable.”

Nose tackle Kory Rasmussen, who had seven tackles and a forced fumble, said, “No matter how tired or sore you are, it is hard to go down when you have the whole team behind you. You’ve got to keep on chugging. We were on a mission.”

Rolovich said, “These kids just refused to believe that they were going to go all the way back home with a loss. The power of belief is a pretty special thing to see.”

It was Saturday.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.