College football coaches often tell us teams improve most between their first game of the season and their second. University of Hawaii fans had better hope this is true, considering the Warriors started their 13-game 2021 slate with a 44-10 loss at UCLA last week.

At least on its face, that cliche makes a lot of sense (you’ve heard the cliche about cliches — the reason they become cliches is because they’re true).

Until the first game of the season is played there is only limited evidence to help determine where improvement is needed most. Before your team gets on the field with an opponent, you practice and scrimmage against your own guys. The members of your scout teams — the players who simulate your upcoming opponent — come off your own bench.

It’s not like the NFL, where you have preseason games. Yes, it’s true that it barely matters who wins or loses those, but they do give you an idea of what players on your team — especially newcomers — can and can’t do. You learn what needs to be worked on.

Of course, identifying problems and solving them are two very different things.

For example, are the Warriors going to learn how to tackle better in one week of practice?

Maybe the best way to look at that is by amending the question a little. Are the Warriors going to learn how to tackle Zack Charbonnet in one week of practice?

Fortunately, this week they don’t have to try again to corral the UCLA running back who went for 106 yards and three TDs against UH last week … in the first half alone.

It got so bad that a young man in his 30s among the group I was watching with filed the frustrated old-man complaint of, “Doesn’t anyone wrap up anymore?!?!”

The comments on the fan sites were brutal. Maybe Michigan followers are just bitter because Charbonnet escaped Ann Arbor via the dreaded transfer portal. But if the Warriors defense needs any more motivation it can read the musings of jilted Wolverines fans.

“It was against Hawaii. Half this board could run for 100 against that defense.”

Ouch.

Then there’s this one:

“I’d have to stop and walk some of the time. So, put me down for JUST over 100 yards vs Hawaii.”

Here’s the best, or worst, depending on your perspective and sense of humor:

“I’m really overweight, had rickets when I was a kid, and have a titanium hip so only good for about 65.”

OK, I’ve done my community service for the week.

Football has changed over the years, and we’ve seen Hawaii teams of recent vintage win games when they didn’t stop the run. That’s because the Warriors were scoring at will themselves and forced more turnovers than they committed.

Those things didn’t happen at UCLA.

Maybe they will this Saturday against Portland State. There won’t be any spectators on hand to cheer on the Warriors; perhaps that will be mitigated by this being the first time they play a game on campus. PSU doesn’t have a running back like Charbonnet, but it does have an experienced dual-threat quarterback in Davis Alexander.

Even though the Vikings are an FCS program — meaning fewer scholarships and a smaller athletic department budget — there’s no way after what happened last week that UH can take them lightly.

Still, it might be a good idea to let running backs coach Abraham Elimimian address the team sometime between now and the opening kickoff. He was a redshirting freshman the last time Portland State played here, in 2000.

UH was coming off what was then the greatest turnaround in college football history, going from 0-12 in 1998 to 9-4 in 1999. June Jones had so much juice he was allowed to officially change the team nickname. Texas was so scared it bought its way out of coming here to open the season.

That left Portland State, where Jones made his mark as a run-and-shoot quarterback, as the season-opening opponent. The newly named Warriors started off OK, leading 10-0 late in the first quarter. Then a couple of things didn’t go their way, and the Vikings blew them out 45-20, in front of a full house at Aloha Stadium.

Unlike 21 years ago, the current Hawaii team has the benefit of lessons learned by starting the season the week prior — as much as it would like to forget the outcome.

By the way, this is the opener for Portland State, which didn’t play any games at all last year.