You could say the University of Hawaii football team got the ultimate hangover cure in the UC Davis Aggies.

But coach Greg McMackin chose not to do that. "That was a good football team we played," he said, after the Warriors scored seven unanswered touchdowns in the first half and cruised to a 56-14 win Saturday.

If that was a good football team, then Hawaii should go straight to the Super Bowl

"I’d like to give our team credit for playing a good football game," McMackin continued.

I do agree with that. After two rough road losses, the Warriors performed with renewed energy and solid execution, dispatching the Aggies with brutal efficiency.

Of course, it helped that the UC Davis players, who compete in the smaller-school Football Championship Subdivision, are about as talented as the UH second-stringers.

But UNLV — which upset Hawaii 40-20 last week — isn’t much better. That was proven by Southern Utah’s 41-16 clobbering of the Rebels earlier Saturday. Southern Utah also is an FCS team, and therefore supposedly inferior to Football Bowl Subdivision teams such as UNLV and Hawaii.

WHAT DOES THIS say about the now 2-2 Warriors as they head for Ruston, La., and their WAC farewell tour — and as the preseason favorites to win the league championship?

By the fourth game of a college football season, you can usually get a read on a team. There should be enough information to tell if your preseason expectations are in line with reality or not.

But this group is still a puzzle. It opened with a solid win at home and then lost two on the road: one it could have won if it didn’t fall behind 21-0 in the first quarter, and then another that it kicked away with early turnovers and other assorted poor execution.

Then Saturday’s bounce-back. You’d like to call the 49-0 first half a coming of age for the Warriors, but you really can’t, considering the level of the opposition.

Many of the UH offensive starters didn’t play in the second half (Bryant Moniz had reached his pitch count with seven first-half touchdown passes). At least they did the Aggies the courtesy of remaining in uniform. Remember 2007 against Northern Colorado?

PERHAPS THIS was a springboard for better things — or at least a purging of the negatives of the previous two games. In the first half it seemed the Warriors were intent on scoring a point for each one of the 28,268 fans we were told were in attendance.

This was OC Sports’ first UH football game. It will be rerun many, many times in the next few weeks, if we’re to judge by the volleyball and soccer telecasts. That’s a nice bonus for UH fans.

Check out the eye-popping stats, savor the fact that so many of the back-ups got playing time.

Enjoy this one.

But the road ahead is uncertain.

"It was a good confidence booster," defensive tackle and captain Vaughn Meatoga said. "But when you get to league play it’s a whole different thing. Anybody can beat anybody in the league, so we really have to focus."

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783 or on Twitter as @davereardon.