AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. » The Hawaii football team changed its starting quarterback and opening woes, but it could not change its losing ways in falling to Air Force 21-7.

A crowd of 25,313 at Falcon Stadium saw misnamed Air Force rush for 338 yards and not throw a pass in dooming the Warriors to their eighth consecutive loss.

"We’re Run Force," Falcon running back Jon Lee mused. "You know it. We’re all about the run."

Short-yardage back Wes Cobb scored on a pair of 2-yard runs and 5-foot-7 back Cody Getz ran for 125 yards — his sixth 100-yard game of the season — and scored on a 5-yard rush.

"Five-eight with cleats on," Getz insisted. "It was all about good blocking and really good blocking."

The Falcons, at 6-5 overall and 5-2 in the Mountain West, are bowl eligible with one regular-season game remaining. After the game, Air Force accepted an invitation to the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl.

The Warriors, meanwhile, fell to 1-9 and 0-7.

For the first time this season, they scored on their opening drive, capped by Jeremy Higgins’ 26-yard pass to slotback Clark Evans. They averaged 16 yards on the opening drives of their first nine games.

But the Warriors could not establish a running threat, which hindered their play-action attack, and their closing punches were to their own gut. They missed a chance to tie it in the third quarter when Joey Iosefa caught a screen pass, then fumbled at the Falcon 10 when he ran into an offensive lineman. Two long Air Force runs set up touchdowns.

"It would have been 14-14, but we fumbled the screen," UH coach Norm Chow said. "You can’t make mistakes against football teams like this."

Chow added that Iosefa was "trying to do too much, way too much. He doesn’t have to. He has to play the normal way. He made a nice cut on that screen."

Iosefa said: "I made the cut and I ran into our O-lineman and (the football) just popped out. That was my fault. That should have been a touchdown play. It’s all on me."

To be sure, it was not one fumble that led to the offense’s crumble.

It appeared the Warriors, who were outscored 118-31 in the first quarter of their first nine games, received a boost from Higgins, a third-year sophomore who was making his first start since his senior season at Saint Louis School in 2009. Sean Schroeder was UH’s starting quarterback for the first nine games.

Higgins used his shiftiness in the pocket to buy time. Higgins was 3-for-5 for 45 yards on UH’s first drive.

But the momentum was planted in sand. The Warriors’ offense is rooted in the rush — to wear down defenses, to move the chains, to set up play-action passes. The Falcons decided to counter with their version of a fullcourt press. They dropped two safeties into a deep zone, placed the corners in the flats, and stormed with seven defenders. The pressure was designed to clog the running lanes with blitzers and to hurry Higgins. The first play of UH’s final four possessions of the first half netted 6 yards, all on Iosefa rushes.

After the opening drive, HIggins said, "We weren’t able to run the ball as well as we thought we were gonna. … They played good coverage. They didn’t want to get beat deep. We didn’t take advantage of that. We didn’t take advantage of what they wanted to give us."

The Warriors could not capitalize when Air Force fumbled a bouncing punt, with the ensuing drive ending in Iosefa’s fumble.

The Warriors did not gain a first down in their first seven possessions of the second half.

Chow said Higgins did a good job early, "but then he went two quarters without him moving the ball."

Higgins was 14-for-23 for 125 yards before being pulled in the fourth quarter.

Schroeder did not find much success in the hurry-up offense. He did not complete any of his five passes and was sacked once.

Iosefa rushed 22 times for 43 yards. He was left to carry the load because Will Gregory did not make the trip after being ejected for punching a Boise State player last week. John Lister was not available because of an injury, and Sterling Jackson had only recently recovered from a groin injury.

The Falcons had no shortage of running options in running their option offense. The Warriors used a nickel defense in which two of the three safeties covered the perimeter. And while the Warriors kept the Falcons in check, two big breakdowns were costly.

Getz took a handoff and dashed through the heart of the UH defense for a 54-yard gain to the UH 19.

"It was an up-the-middle play," Getz said. "Nothing fancy. It was our team getting after their team and seeing who’s more of a man. Our linemen did a heck of a job."

Five plays later, Getz raced to the right, absorbed a hit from John Hardy-Tuliau, pirouetted and found the end zone for a 14-7 lead.

Later in the third quarter, on third and 2, Lee sprinted around right end for a 52-yard gain.

"It was just an outside-zone play," said Lee, who has been clocked at 4.33 seconds over 40 yards. "We were working it all year, and it’s been working all year."

In the postgame chill, Chow tried to analyze the damage.

"They made some adjustments offensively and ran the ball better in the second half than they did in the first," Chow said. "Our adjustments didn’t quite work out as well."

Of the Falcons’ running attack, Chow said: "That’s what they do. We knew that. Everybody knew that. They have it down. They have such a nice system to themselves."