MWC’s new football coaches seeing mixed early reviews

In the space of 36 days last winter, four struggling Mountain West Conference football programs — Hawaii, Colorado State, Fresno State and New Mexico — hired new coaches.

Now, going on 10 months later, the Warriors will have an opportunity to compare progress reports with each of them at shoulder-pad level.

In succession, beginning tonight, the Warriors play their next three games against New Mexico, Colorado State (Oct. 27) and Fresno State (Nov. 3) in what should be a revealing 22-day span.

How the Warriors handle this stretch figures to say not only a lot about how their season unfolds, but how year one of the rebuilding project is perceived.

At the halfway point of the season — UH plays its sixth game of a 12-day schedule tonight — the early returns are mixed for the Mountain West’s four freshman coaches. While it has, so far, been a painful process for Norm Chow at UH (1-4) and Jim McElwain at CSU (1-5), New Mexico’s Bob Davie and (3-3) and Fresno State’s Tim De Ruyter (4-2) have had encouraging starts.

All but Davie, who was 35-15 during five years at Notre Dame (1997-2001), are first-time head coaches.

At UH, the disappointment isn’t so much the record — it was hard to imagine much better than a 1-4 start going in — but the lopsided scores that have accompanied it. The Warriors have been outscored, 217-48, by their Football Bowl Subdivision opponents, and injuries, especially to a depleted defensive line, haven’t helped.

The string of three consecutive blowout losses have reinforced a widely held feeling that the Warriors, in making the considerable leap from run-and-shoot to pro-style offenses, have been trying to pound too many rounds pegs into square holes to be successful this season.

Which is part of what makes tonight’s matchup intriguing, since Davie, who had been in the broadcast booth for the last 10 seasons after leaving Notre Dame, discarded the pro style offense the Lobos had used for three consecutive 1-11 seasons in favor of an option attack. He, too, came in with a plan, and was set on making the personnel, both inherited and acquired, fit into it.

For the most part they have, in an offense that remarkably ranks eighth in the country in rushing. It is the biggest reason for the mild surprise that has been the Lobos’ 3-3 start. The Lobos have won the games they were expected to take (Southern, New Mexico State and Texas State) and dropped the ones (Texas, Boise State and Texas Tech) they figured lose.

The difference is the Lobos’ FBS games have been significantly closer, with New Mexico being outscored 154-105. The tightness of the 32-29 loss to Boise State has been the biggest statement to date on behalf of progress, and a major reason the Lobos come in as three-point favorites tonight.

And, the Lobos’ schedule has been slightly less arduous, according to the NCAA, which ranks UH’s strength of schedule 42nd and UNM’s 53rd for teams already played.

The best three-game yardstick on UH’s rebuilding starts tonight.

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

Correction: Bob Davie is the football coach at New Mexico. An earlier version of this story spelled his last name Davies.