After too many losing seasons, the excitement around University of Hawaii football was palpable, the expectations rising.

After all, the Rainbow Warriors were on a winning roll and the newly installed run-and-shoot offense had begun to pile up yards, points and victims when Rice University, the Las Vegas betting line underdog, came to Aloha Stadium.

The present-day ’Bows?

It could be, but in this case if you are a UH fan, you would hope not. Because the example cited here is from 1999, when the Owls, in their first trip here as Western Athletic Conference opponents, ran right over the ’Bows in scoring a 39-18 upset.

It was a textbook trap-door game.

The ’Bows, smarting from the loss, eventually regained their equilibrium and went on to a 9-4 finish in head coach June Jones’ inaugural season. But it was a lesson learned, the hard way.

Which brings us back to tonight, when another, curiously even heavier underdog Rice team point-spread-wise, shows up. These Owls, 1-1, arrived as 171⁄2 -point underdogs. That is the most UH has been favored against a fellow Football Bowl Subdivision team since 2011.

But the situation has the potential of becoming a trap-door game only if UH lets it spiral that way.

To this point one of the things you have to like about the ’Bows is the fact that little damage has been self inflicted. While there is much-deserved praise for what UH has done offensively, there is also the matter of what the ’Bows haven’t done.

To date the ’Bows have kept turnovers to a minimum (one per game). Also notable, they have reduced their years-old propensity for penalties to just one in last week’s victory over Navy. You have to go back to 2004 for the last time they were penalized for as few as 5 yards.

As long as those things keep up, the offense continues to perform at a high level and the defense doesn’t suffer second-half letdowns, the remainder of the first half of the 2018 schedule would seem to set up well for the Rainbow Warriors.

Not until they meet up with Brigham Young (Oct. 13) in the eighth game of this 13-game season in Provo, Utah, are they likely to be significant underdogs. If then.

There are no Power Five opponents to be found on the regular-season schedule for the first time in 17 years and, at this point, no Top 25 foes of any stripe on the horizon.

The ’Bows make an inviting target as the Owls, who lost to the other UH — Houston — last week, seek to make a significant jump in achievement from game two to game three. “You wish it was going to be as big and maybe it can be,” Owls’ first-year head coach Mike Bloomgren said, hopefully, at his weekly press conference.

“Maybe we can be a year one program. Maybe we can take another jump like that,” Bloomgren said. “But we have to keep making incremental progress. That’s been stressed since the moment we walked (into) this building and the kids have given it to us.”

The same holds true for the Rainbow Warriors, who, if they keep their eye on the task at hand in weeks like this especially and make their own incremental improvement, could have something really special to show for it.

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