The chant rolled through Aloha Stadium like claps of rising thunder: "Dee-fense! Dee-fense!"

For the first time in years it was again a rallying cry of the University of Hawaii football faithful, not some longshot prayer to the heavens.

And for the better part of 3 hours and 20 minutes of a fiercely contested Saturday night game, the Rainbow Warriors responded with an inspiring effort that made a crowd of 32,197 stick around to the bitter end of a 17-16 loss to 25th-ranked Washington and applaud the effort.

Bitter in large part because the defense did almost as much as it could have been expected to do. Much more, for sure, than was imagined of the remnants of a unit that had been in the bottom 10 percent of 123 major college football teams last year in rushing defense, total defense and scoring defense.

"We played some great defense," head coach Norm Chow said. "We need to play better, more consistent offense. Gosh dang."

Rick Blangiardi, a defensive coach on the 1973 team that upset Washington in Seattle, told the team in a pregame talk about how that team blanked the Huskies in the second half and the ‘Bows responded after staring at a 17-10 halftime deficit.

New defensive coordinator Kevin Clune talked about taking "200 steps" when he and a renovated staff took over the unit in the spring and the ‘Bows looked like they had made about 195 of them in bold strides getting to the point where they pitched the first second-half shutout by a UH team since the 2010 season.

Nine times in the second half the Huskies started a series with the ball, and on eight of them they ended up punting, averaging but 2.7 yards per play in the second half. On the ninth, time ran out.

Five times UH forced UW into three-and-out situations.

They did it with a determined defensive line that gave up, on average, 48.5 pounds per man to a UW offensive line that averaged a hulking 6 feet, 5 inches and 321 pounds.

"Body weight doesn’t mean as much as heart and effort," Clune said.

Three things UH didn’t do — come up with a turnover, keep from surrendering a big play and prevent the Huskies from controlling the final minutes — kept them short of perfection and will haunt them.

"Our job is to give the offense one more shot, one more shot," Clune said. "If we score 16 (points), our job is to hold them to 15."

But the overall effort was heartening for a program and fan base that desperately needed something, anything, to cling to after three consecutive losing seasons.

The offense showed some potential and special teams were sterling. But it was the once downtrodden defense that opened eyes and did the most on opening night to raise hopes for this 2014 season.

And time and again the faithful responded in decibels too loud to ignore.

"We heard it, we heard the people out there," said defensive tackle Moses Samia. "We know there is a tradition of defense. We wanted to uphold it."

For openers, you’d have to say the ‘Bows did.

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