RENO, Nev. >> A University of Hawaii football team that had led the 130-member NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision in turnovers turned it over Saturday night all right.
Only this time it wasn’t the ball, it was a new leaf.
Somewhere amid the intermittent snowflakes and rain at Mackay Stadium, the Rainbow Warriors put the pass interception and fumble imperfections of the past behind them and came as close to well-rounded perfection as we have seen in ages with a 54-3 dismantling of Nevada in their Mountain West Conference season opener.
So, this is what the Rainbow Warriors, sans turnovers, can look like.
It was a complete, by-the-numbers victory encompassing offense, defense and special teams with a trick play for an exclamation that added up to the Warriors’ most lopsided road win in their eight-year MWC membership. Overall, it was the second-largest road win in school history, surpassed only by a 63-10 blowout at Utah State in 2006.
UH’s fourth victory against one loss was accomplished without a turnover while forcing a season-high three from the Wolf Pack and blocking a punt. Justice Augafa got the game ball for returning Andrew Choi’s blocked punt 2 yards for a touchdown. It was UH’s first blocked-punt TD in seven years.
The multi-faceted domination was so thorough that by the second half of a game UH led 31-3 at halftime, chants of “Let’s Go ’Bows” had become the most audible sounds from grandstands rapidly thinned of Wolf Pack partisans.
“That was something to hear that on the road,” running back Fred Holly III marveled. “This was just a really fun game all around.”
To glimpse the Warriors’ mastery of this Nevada homecoming you would have never known the frustrations and disappointment UH had long experienced in previously going 1-8 at Mackay. Even the lone victory here, accomplished by the Sugar Bowl-bound 2007 team, came with great difficulty, 28-26 on Dan “Iceman” Kelly’s last-gasp field goal.
The ’Bows have jumped to some big leads before, but this one was notable for the fact that the home team never got so much as a toe back in it.
“It was the first time I remember choking somebody out when we had them down,” a satisfied head coach Nick Rolovich said.
The choke hold was applied just before halftime when, following Nevada’s 36-yard field goal that cut the lead to 28-3 with 36 seconds remaining, Rolovich called for a fake from the “victory” formation. Instead of kneeling to let time run out as the formation suggested, quarterback Cole McDonald handed off to Cedric Byrd II, who bolted around left end for 29 yards to set up Ryan Meskell’s 44-yard field goal.
After that it was only a matter of how lopsided the final score would be.
McDonald, without an interception for the first time this season, had the most accurate game of his UH career, completing 83 percent of his passes (25 of 30) for 312 yards and four touchdowns. He spread the wealth among eight receivers, with Jason-Matthew Sharsh grabbing nine of them for 123 yards and a touchdown and Byrd hauling in three touchdowns among his seven receptions for 87 yards.
Choi, the freshman defensive lineman who blocked the punt on which Augafa scored, is the brother of former player Zeno Choi (2015-18), who never had a block like that of his own.
“That is one thing I can brag about on him,” Choi said.
On this night, it would be but one of many things the ’Bows could savor about the new leaf they turned.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
