Ferd Lewis: Rainbow Warriors need to find out who they really are

It wasn’t the reminders of the 7,220-foot elevation, the chapping dry air, weather or even the incessant choruses of drinking songs from the stands that most irked former University of Hawaii football coach Dick Tomey about going to Laramie, Wyo.

It was that, when you lose, you have the longest trip home in the conference to reflect on the experience, Tomey grimly observed after his first visit to the high plains.

Ample time, for example, now for the current edition to consider which of the teams we have seen are the real Rainbow Warriors. The squad that administered a 34-19 beat-down at Fresno State in the opener or the team that absorbed one, 31-7, from Wyoming six days later?

Is it a team that can run an opponent into the turf or one that was rendered little more than a speed bump itself? One that can climb out of an early hole or one that just compounds it?

What we have, already one quarter of the way into this curious, truncated season, is a tale of two widely disparate teams and an urgency to demonstrate an enduring identity.

For now, call ’em the Who Knows ’Bows.

Because just when you thought the Rainbow Warriors were on the way to starting to put it together early, along comes Wyoming to expose just how much work UH has ahead if it is to be a genuine factor in the Mountain West Conference this season.

We now know the Warriors weren’t as good as the first impression they made at Fresno and, you hope, not nearly as flawed as what Wyoming exposed to a night owl national TV audience Friday that had little reason to stick around to the end.

It is a coaching axiom that a team makes its biggest improvement from Week 1 to Week 2. But for UH, Week 2 more resembled a step backward on several fronts. Tackling, penalties, pass and catch, blocking, you name it and the deficiencies stood out Friday.

“We just got knocked on our butt,” UH head coach Todd Graham succinctly put it after the Warriors scored their fewest points in the past 32 games over parts of four seasons. “We have to get back up and go to work.”

In that, perhaps the Warriors can take a cue from their chief tormentor, Wyoming running back Xazavian Valladay, who ran roughshod over UH with 163 yards and two touchdowns on 32 carries. He and the Cowboys were in a somewhat similar position coming into the game following a season-opening loss at Nevada.

“I just felt like we had to find ourselves, find our motivation, find out who we are,” Valladay said. “We all wanted to make a statement. We all knew we didn’t have our best performance (at Nevada). We had to make a statement.”

And, they clearly did in a dominating performance.

Come Saturday in their home opener against New Mexico, it is the Warriors’ opportunity to make their declaration of purpose and keep the season from getting away from them.

And it comes not a moment too soon considering that their next two games after that are Nov. 14 in Carson, Calif., against San Diego State and back in Aloha Stadium Nov. 21 against defending champion Boise State.

They are contests that will go a long way toward defining the direction the Rainbow Warriors season ultimately takes.

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