From green party to homecoming heartbreak, Hawaii coach Nick Rolovich wasn’t in a mood to make excuses Saturday night.
Not after UNLV scored 10 points in the final five minutes for a 38-31 victory in front of a season-high crowd of 31,281 energized spectators at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu
“I apologize to our fans for not pulling that one out,” Rolovich said at his new conference.
The Rainbow Warriors (3-4, 2-1 Mountain West) were seeking their first 3-0 start to conference play since 2010, but instead they took a step back.
Rolovich said there was plenty of blame to go around.
“This team has got their face kicked in, came back and we won some games and we played pretty well and felt pretty good about ourselves,” he said. “The next step was to come in here and win a close game, and we didn’t get it done.”
Lexington Thomas scored on a 34-yard TD run with 4:58 left and Evan Pantels kicked the go-ahead field goal with 49 seconds remaining for the Rebels (3-4, 2-1 ).
UNLV caused the only turnover by either team when Tau Lotulelei stripped the ball from Hawaii quarterback Dru Brown and Darius Mouton recovered with 2:56 left. That set up the game-winning drive. UNLV forced a four-and-out on Hawaii’s last possession to secure the win.
“That game has more chances in it then a ton of games I’ve been involved with,” Rolovich said. “There were a ton of chances to win that game and play better. We have to accept that.
One particular play, after Paul Harris returned the opening kickoff 75 yards, irked Rolovich. On third-and-11 from the 26, Brown was dropped for a “stupid” sack for a loss of 19 yards, taking UH out of field-goal range.
Brown, a sophomore, finished 17 of 32 for 217 yards and two touchdowns, but he wasn’t beyond taking criticism from his first-year coach – no player was.
“There are certain elements to playing a game at the position of quarterback that we need to continually get better at,” Rolovich said “We can’t take that sack to start that game.
“And there is probably 20 plays where there is going to be some unhappy people watching that film.”
“Let’s not sugar coat it,” he added. I’m talking players and coaches.”
The Rainbow Warriors took fourth-quarter leads at 31-24, Brown threw a touchdown pass to Diocemy Saint Juste, and again at 38-31 on Harris’ seven-yard run.
Marcus Kemp had six catches for a career-high 126 yards.
Still, his coach saw some bad habits return to the receiving corp.
“I don’t know why our receivers went back to trying to catch with their shoulder pads,” Rolovich said. “There are no thumbs on shoulder pads.”
Rebels redshirt freshman quarterback Dalton Sneed threw for a career-best 279 yards on 19-of-27 passing with two touchdowns, adding 61 on the ground. Thomas finished with 102 rushing yards as UNLV gained 535 yards of total offense – it came in averaging 383.
The Rebels were also 10 of 16 on third downs, helping them run 15 more offensive plays.
“UNLV came in, was physical, pounded the ball and we couldn’t get them off the field,” Rolovich said.
Hawaii running back Steven Lakalaka rushed for two more touchdowns, his fifth game in a row with a score.
After absorbing its fifth homecoming loss in a row, Hawaii will try to bounce back Saturday at Air Force.
“I really appreciate the fans and their support,” Kemp said, “but right now I’m worried about what we can do better.”