Warhawks worse than Warriors

It turns out Nick Rolovich might not have the toughest turnaround job in college football.

That honor could belong to whoever is the next guy in charge at Louisiana-Monroe, which like the Rainbow Warriors, played under an interim coach Saturday night.

John Mumford, who took over for a fired Todd Berry two weeks ago, couldn’t do what Chris Naeole did for Hawaii at Aloha Stadium.

ULM’s losing streak increased to 10 games following a 28-26 loss to the Rainbow Warriors.

The Warhawks are 1-11 this year, with the only win coming against FCS member Nicholls State.

ULM showed some fight holding Alabama to 34 points in an early-season loss, but has now lost back-to-back games to a Texas State team that is 3-8 and a Hawaii squad that hadn’t beaten an FBS team since its season opener.

“Talking to Coach Naeole before the game, I know we’re both in a tough situation,” Mumford said. “You can’t dig a hole like we did early and stub our toe and shoot ourselves in the foot with mistakes and miscommunications, because we have no room for error as a football team.”

As bad teams tend to do, ULM beat itself for much of the night. It started in the first quarter when the Warhawks forced Hawaii into a three-and-out on UH’s first drive.

Instead of starting its next drive inside UH territory, the Warhawks gave up the ball up on a Junior Williams fumble that Hawaii recovered at midfield.

Six Paul Harris runs later, UH had a 7-0 lead.

The Warhawks held UH to a potential field-goal try late in the second quarter, but an incomplete pass turned into a personal foul penalty on ULM, giving UH first-and-goal. Two plays later, UH had another touchdown.

It continued early in the second half despite the Warhawks’ late score that made it 21-10 at the break.

UH was third-and-10 and threw an incomplete pass that should have led to a punt, but instead, ULM was whistled for holding, resulting in a first down.

UH marched another 68 yards to score on the drive and take a 28-10 lead.

“We had some silly penalties that hurts us, like on third down grabbing a guy in man coverage and just tearing his jersey off is just silly,” Mumford said.

Despite all of that, ULM had a chance to tie the game after a bad third-down snap by UH was recovered by ULM’s Lorenzo Jackson in the end zone for a touchdown.

It cut the deficit to 28-26 with 3:03 left, but the Warhawks dropped the 2-point pass that would have tied it.

“You never know when the plays early in the game are going to come up and count, and in a close game like this, it came down to three or four plays in the first half,” Mumford said. “The ball was right there, it was a good throw.”

The dropped pass in the end zone was the final offensive play of the game for the Warhawks, who allowed UH to run out the clock after holding the Warriors to 16 yards on their previous five drives.

It’s been that kind of season.