One of these nights the University of Hawaii is going to win a football game again, but it probably won’t be until it stops beating itself.

The Rainbow Warriors lost for the 13th time in the past 14 games Saturday night and one of the biggest reasons was its propensity for debilitating penalties.

Again.

The ’Bows dug a hole with early penalties and then doomed a fourth-quarter comeback bid with more ill-timed errors of commission in a head-shaking 38-30 loss to Oregon State.

On a night when traffic finally flowed smoothly into Aloha Stadium, a turnout of 26,700 saw the home team hit another dead end.

In an 0-2 start this season the ’Bows have lost two games by a combined nine points, but the losses have pretty much been self inflicted when you consider 23 of their opponents’ points were set up or aided by UH penalties.

In this regard you could say UH was in midseason form, which was hardly the idea after finishing 112th (among 123 Football Bowl Subdivision teams) in penalty yards per game in 2013.

With an average of 7.3 penalties per game last season, the 2013 team was the most penalized UH squad in five years.

With UH, however, it isn’t just the number of penalties –– though there were 12 for 108 yards against the Beavers — but the when and where. They fueled OSU drives and scuttled UH’s.

You have to admire the way these ’Bows bounced back after trailing by as many as 31 points. You appreciate that they found ways to stick around and make a game of it, but, in the end, the wish is that they could come from ahead for a change and not dig holes so deep and so often.

“I thought our guys played hard, but we’ve gotta play smarter,” coach Norm Chow said. “That was our goal from last year — not just to play hard but to play smart.”

In the space of less than five minutes in an all-too illustrative first quarter that goal pretty much went out the window.

With UH down 7-0, a 59-yard Scott Harding punt that would have pinned the Beavers at their 9-yard line was called back due to an illegal shift. The new punt instead left the Beavers at the OSU 40.

Then UH managed to compound the situation with two pass interference infractions, once of which nullified an interception in the end zone (a pick created by the violation), and an offsides aiding a five-play, 60-yard OSU drive to a 14-0 lead.

A debateable roughing-the passer-penalty in the second quarter, when Julian Gener appeared to be blocked into quarterback Sean Mannion on third-and-15, gave the Beavers new life and, eventually a 27-yard field goal and a 24-7 lead.

But it was a confounding series in the fourth quarter where UH had an opportunity to close to 38-30 with more than five minutes remaining that ultimately did UH in.

Two false starts and an offensive pass interference penalty left the ’Bows in the shadow of the goal posts without any points.

“You can’t make the kind of mistakes we make against good teams,” Chow said.

Unfortunately, UH’s problem in this streak of on-going futility is that it has been making them against everybody.

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