The offensive and defensive lines aren’t the only patches of turf the University of Hawaii football team is attempting to defend when it plays Oregon State tonight.

There is also the wider matter of the Rainbow Warriors’ vast backyard, the state of Hawaii.

To the winner of the 6 p.m. nonconference showdown at Aloha Stadium presumably goes a leg up on high school recruiting. Or, at least, some significant optics to go with immediate bragging rights.

Not so much in Oregon, where UH has hardly dipped its toes in the recruiting pond over the years, but here in the 50th state, where the Beavers seek to sink their roots even deeper.

This year Oregon State has six players from Hawaii on its roster. Over the past decade, the Beavers have had as many as 14 in a season and have averaged about seven reaching to as many as three islands at a time. Some years, in fact, they’ve had more players from Kahuku than Corvallis, Ore., and its environs.

Some of whom the Warriors have also coveted and tried to keep home.

It is a battle UH has waged since before its current head coach, Nick Rolovich, was born. Joe Francis came out of Kamehameha Schools and helped the Beavers to the 1957 Rose Bowl before going on to play for the Green Bay Packers. Rockne Freitas, an All-Pro with the Detroit Lions, and Skippa Diaz were prominent among those who followed in the 1960s.

Hawaii was a regular stop on the recruiting trail for the Beavers’ winningest coach, Mike Riley, in his 14 years at OSU (1997-98 and 2003-14). He was such a fixture recruiting here that legend had it he used to sit in the back of then-Kahuku High coach Siuaki Livai’s math class. And not to brush up on his algebra.

Riley came by his interest in Hawaii players early on while an assistant at Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore. The Wildcats, an NAIA and later an NCAA Division III powerhouse, were known to have as many as 10 starters from Hawaii in some years.

When Riley went to OSU, he took his recruiting black book with him, solicited games on the schedule with UH and frequently had assistants with Hawaii connections. It wasn’t just the plate lunches that brought former UH offensive line coach Mike Cavanaugh back around letter of intent signing periods.

The Beavers’ current coach, Jonathan Smith, was teammates with several players from Hawaii during his days as a quarterback at OSU, and has tried to maintain the pipeline, picking up a couple of former UH coaches. Apart from the controversial “mailgate” episode.

The Beavers already have at least one commitment from the 2020 recruiting crop.

That’s where tonight’s game comes in. Beat the Beavers on top of the season-opening victory over Arizona and the ’Bows have a fresh reminder to prospective recruits and their parents that UH can hold its own with those Pac-12 teams.

And, if the ’Bows prevail in this one to a 2-0 start, they would take a significant step toward eventual bowl eligibility while making the postseason that much tougher a slog for the Beavers.

Be assured Rolovich and his staff would like to walk into recruits’ living rooms and pitch staying home and going to bowls versus going away and watching them on TV.

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