For eight games this season, freshman quarterback Kent Myers was a redshirt, and his only job on game days for Utah State was to signal in plays from the sideline.

In the ninth one, Saturday night, he got on the field for the first time and his three touchdown passes helped signal an ignominious fourth consecutive and most distressing losing season for Hawaii.

The 35-14 loss that Myers and Utah State inflicted with seeming ease leaves the Rainbow Warriors at 2-7 (1-3 Mountain West) and bowl ineligible with four games remaining (barring an unlikely conference championship).

Not that anybody has held out much hope for this postseason for a while.

Certainly not the smallest Aloha Stadium crowd of the season 19,799, many of whom hit the exits in the third quarter of UH’s penultimate home game of the year.

But leave it to Myers, somebody who hadn’t expected to see the field at all this season until injuries KO’d the first three quarterbacks, to underline just how far removed from the bowl picture UH has fallen these days.

Remember when people thought the Hawaii Bowl was as automatic as a point-after kick? Recall a time when some folks looked down on the annual appearance in the hometown bowl?

These days it might as well be the Rose Bowl for the degree of difficulty involved for UH. Not since 1994-98 has UH put together a longer string of losing seasons.

Now it could be the Aggies (6-3, 3-1) booking Christmas Eve and taking UH’s place as the Hawaii Bowl sifts through available Mountain West teams, again.

Myers was summoned off the redshirt list last week and had so little familiarity with the Aggies’ plays that they were encased in a plastic sleeve that ran from his wrist part way up his left arm for reference Saturday night.

"He’s still learning how to figure it out," Utah State coach Matt Wells said.

But he was able to read the UH defense like a large-type book, completing his first 12 passes until, finally, suffering an incompletion with 8 minutes, 3 seconds remaining in the third quarter.

"I didn’t think it would be like that," Myers confessed afterward. "Not at all."

Yet, he looked All-Mountain West caliber, completing 14 of 15 passes for 186 yards. Except for one play, when he was a good 3 yards past the line of scrimmage before uncorking a pass, his performance belied his youth and inexperience.

How is it, you wonder, that Utah State can be four-deep in quality quarterbacks and the Aggies say they have an Oregon transfer also redshirting who might be even better and UH’s passing game struggles to reach a 50 percent completion percentage each week?

Just getting off the ball in something resembling unison was a problem for the UH offense this night. It had six false-start penalties, including three on one drive. Naturally the drive died.

Overall, UH had 13 penalties for 100 yards, none more destructive than a roughing-the-punter call in the third quarter after punter Scott Harding backed the Aggies up to the 2-yard line and the defense kept them pinned there.

The one thing UH couldn’t afford to do rough punter Jaron Bentrude was what it did. Bentrude was knocked to the ground by Gaetano DeMattei, in the process foiling Harding’s punt return for a touchdown.

But instead of cutting the Aggies’ lead to 28-21, it propelled Utah State’s 98-yard touchdown drive for a game-sealing 35-14 lead.

In response to a question afterward about another tough setback, head coach Norm Chow, head down as he trudged up stairs, said, "They’re all tough."

Yes, they are, especially when a true freshman comes out of nowhere to put you in front of the TV for bowl season.

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