Hawaii coach Nick Rolovich gave his football team high marks for effort and improvement in advance of Saturday’s spring fling.

“We’ve had great energy for 14 practices,” Rolovich said following Thursday’s two-hour workout on the grass field. “That’s probably the thing that stands out. Schematically, we’ve got enough for them to try to perfect in the summertime. We have a long way to go before we play, and we have to get a ton better. We’re not ready to play right now. But we’re ready to attack the summer with player responsibility and determination to have a positive season. That’s where we want to be at the end of spring.”

This semester, the Rainbow Warriors resurrected the run-and-shoot offense and implemented a multi-look defense. Thursday’s practice was the last of the spring for on-field instruction. The Rainbow Warriors will use the 15th — and final — spring practice for an instrasquad scrimmage and other festivities.

“We started off fast, and then we started pulling back,” Rolovich said of the offense’s syllabus for spring training. “We wanted to get good at a few concepts.”

While the competition will remain open through the July start of training camp, quarterbacks Cole McDonald and Jeremy Moussa appeared to pick up the intricacies of the four-wide offense.

“There are new concepts — new reads, new drops — especially for the quarterbacks,” said McDonald, who will be a third-year sophomore in the fall. “Some plays we ran last year, some plays we installed. But we’re spending a lot of time repping it and watching film and really going over it. That’s why it looks like we’ve been running it for a while.”

Six recruits will join the offensive line this summer. But Rolovich said the patchwork line, which lost three starters, “took a ton of reps. They got a lot better. They had a great mind-set from the start. We saw guys step up.”

Joey Nu‘uanu Kuhi‘iki, who moved from the defensive line; Kamuela Borden, who returned from a two-year church mission, and Micah Vanterpool rotated at the two tackle positions. “All three of them, you feel we can line up and play with these guys,” Rolovich said.

Corey Batoon, who was hired at defensive coordinator in December, said he installed about 70 percent of the defensive schemes. The Warriors align with multiple fronts, and there are sub-packages that involve a rover or nickelback. Defensive lineman Zeno Choi, for instance, can play nose tackle in a three-man front or the 3-technique (across the outside shoulder of a guard) in an even alignment.

“There’s a lot of movements,” Choi said of attacking schemes, “and I love to move.”

Batoon said he will add to the defensive packages during training camp in July. “We’ll build from there,” Batoon said. “There won’t be much going in for the kids to learn. But there will be tweaks and adjustments. … They did a great job learning the system, acclimating to different things. You wish you had another 15 days. You’d love to go on (with spring training), but that momentum helps you through the summer and player-run practices. Now the team is theirs. They know the nuts and bolts of (the defense).”