Ferd Lewis: UH football team’s turnaround among nation’s best

To gain some perspective on the University of Hawaii football team’s just-completed regular season it helps to turn the pages back nine or 10 months.

Back to a time when the headlines of the day were about the exodus from a floundering Rainbow Warriors program.

Climbing out of the crater of a 3-9 (1-7 Mountain West Conference) season, the two-year starting quarterback had hit the exit, as had the team’s leading receiver, a projected starting offensive lineman and half of the coaching staff. They were to be followed by several other players and, eventually, a bunch of season-ticket holders.

Fast forward to this past Saturday, when the ’Bows escaped from San Diego State with a 31-30 overtime victory that gave them an 8-5 (5-3 MWC) finish to the regular season.

There probably won’t be a conference coach of the year award in it Wednesday when the Mountain West hands out its regular-season honors, but despite a late slide, it was a season of notable achievement for UH head coach Nick Rolovich.

When the ’Bows broke camp in August, Las Vegas oddsmakers listed the over/under betting line on their season total of victories at 3.5. Polls and preseason magazines had UH battling with San Jose State over the bottom two places in the division, if not the whole league.

But as the ’Bows prepare for an expected Dec. 22 appearance in the Hawaii Bowl, they have one of the biggest turnarounds in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

In their vault from 3-9 to 8-5, they have, so far, managed a 4.5-game improvement the way the NCAA measures such things. Only four teams — Georgia Southern, Cincinnati, Syracuse and Baylor — have so far cobbled bigger turnarounds.

In the 12-team Mountain West, only Utah State, whose Matt Wells is the favorite for coach of the year, matches UH’s turnaround. The Aggies went from 6-7 to 10-2 and played for the Mountain Division championship, handing the ’Bows their worst loss of the season, 56-17, along the way.

To be sure the ’Bows took their lickings large and often in a four-game stretch from Brigham Young, Nevada, Fresno State and the Aggies, all by 18 points or more.

Yet, unlike the Aztecs team they beat Saturday, the ’Bows managed to climb off the deck and win their final two games. By the skin of their teeth but with dogged persistence. Now, they go into the bowl game in pursuit of a third.

Only once in the previous 10 seasons have they won eight or more games in a season. Until Rolovich took over in 2016, they had managed to win just eight games — total — in three years.

Rolovich made some mistakes in hiring his initial coaching staff, and perhaps in not going to a form of the run-and-shoot offense earlier as well. The former error is one a rookie head coach can especially be prone to. But unlike some of his predecessors, he wasn’t too hard-headed to realize and learn from them, making some immediate and effective course corrections.

While the ’Bows benefited from a schedule devoid of opponents from Power Five conferences, they also drew three of the four MWC teams that were nationally ranked at some point.

Lost in all the controversy over who should be the starting quarterback was the fact that the ’Bows won with two who had never started a college game. They spent the bulk of the season in the top 10 in passing offense with guys who had just nine passes between them entering the season.

Rolovich won’t likely get conference coach of the year Wednesday, but he will have earned the contract extension that should come tucked in his Christmas stocking.

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