We have publicly glimpsed Nick Rolovich as the skillful marketer in top hat and tails.

We have witnessed Rolo the benevolent, bestowing prized scholarships on deserving walk-on players in the MMA ring and amid K-Pop stars.

We have seen Rolo the motivator with hunting knife jauntily stuffed in his belt on the Aloha Stadium sidelines.

We have even watched Rolo the tutor racing, stride for stride for a time, down the sideline reminding a defensive back to protect the football while returning an interception for a touchdown.

What we need to see more of now is Rolo the hammer, pounding home the discipline on his University of Hawaii team, which is in much need of it.

After a 35-21 loss to previously winless Nevada Saturday, his Rainbow Warriors are at the halfway point of their season with a 2-4 record, which means they are on the precipice of blowing the whole thing.

The ’Bows must win at least four of their six remaining regular-season games to go to a bowl game and the postseason. That’s the one significant goal still available to them in a season in which four consecutive losses and an 0-3 start to the Mountain West Conference have dumped everything else off the table.

But to achieve that, as has long become apparent, they have to get reacquainted with discipline, on and off the field.

The fact that the ’Bows have had at least six players suspended — or put in time out — for what have been termed violations of team or school policy in the past month while also being among the NCAA’s most penalized teams is not mutually exclusive. Just mutually destructive.

There is a common thread here and it is the discipline that continues to unravel while threatening to take the season with it.

In this the Nevada debacle is but the most recent and egregious example. Running back Diocemy Saint Juste’s 214 yards Saturday marked the 12th time in the school’s history that a UH player has rushed for 200 yards or more in a game. But, tellingly, it was the first time UH had lost one of those games.

An 84-yard touchdown run was called back by penalty, the third time a penalty has wiped a score off the board for UH this season. Overall, six penalties in a game-altering 2-minute, 32-second span of the second quarter told you all you needed to know. It says the buck stops at the head coach.

To his credit, in the spring and on into fall camp Rolovich made a point of requiring players to run 71-yard sprints, symbolizing the 71.64 yards per game of penalties UH incurred last season. He and his staff have constantly preached responsibility.

But, clearly, symbolism and beseeching haven’t done the trick. In fact, the ’Bows have regressed and are averaging 87.17 yards per game this season. Or, closing in on nearly double (49.23) what UH was handed in 2014. Progress this isn’t. What it is, however, is a figure that currently places them 126th among 129 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

In his season and a half back in Manoa, Rolovich has set the tone for so much of what the ’Bows want to be about. But the penchant for penalties isn’t “Playing Warrior” or playing smart.

We need to see him — or one of his deputized assistants — pointedly and immediately in somebody’s face mask if careless and selfish infractions continue to occur. The team needs to see somebody ordering a repeat offender to a more-than-temporary place on the bench.

As such, it is not enough to see Rolovich, arms folded, jaw clenched, silently seething on the sidelines amid a succession of debilitating penalties as the season slips away.

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