You can point to all kinds of reasons why Hawaii lost 42-10 at Washington State on Saturday.

How about turnovers? The Warriors lost the ball three times, and the Cougs converted those opportunities into touchdowns every time. Meanwhile, WSU did not fumble or get intercepted even once.

A stat just as troubling figured heavily in UH’s most lopsided of five losses against FBS opponents this season. The Warriors failed to make a first down on all eight of their third-down attempts. Make that nine if you count the one attempt on fourth down.

I may have seen a third-down-conversion o-fer before, but if so it was probably in a high school mismatch.

Here’s the saddest part of this for Hawaii fans: Before the first turnover and the third-down failures started to pile up, the Warriors played even with the Cougs.

They even led briefly, as Brayden Schager completed his first six passes. But the fact that UH ran out of gas on its first drive at the WSU 6 and had to settle for three points was a bad sign.

Then, after the Cougs went ahead with a touchdown on their next possession, pretty much the same thing happened — except this time the Warriors added a bonus flub. After they again failed to cross the goal line from short range to retake the lead with a touchdown, they missed the chip-shot field goal that would have made it 7-6, too.

That seemed to remind Washington State why it was favored to win by nearly three touchdowns on homecoming, and it acted accordingly, building its lead to 21-3 by halftime.

Maybe UH just needs to give the red zone a different name.

Call it the green zone instead.

Everybody knows green means go. To borrow a line from AC/DC: “No stop signs. Speed limit. Nobody’s gonna stop me now.”

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Would 14 points instead of three on those two early visits to just a few yards shy of the Washington State goal line have made any difference in what followed?

We’ll never know. But the lack of successful execution in finishing drives is nearly as hard to watch as the ridiculous pounding Schager continues to take week after week.

Add this loss to the one against Boise State last week and those to San Diego State and UCLA earlier in the season where maximizing point production on deep drives might have made a difference — or at least given the Warriors a reasonable chance deeper into the game.

Technically, the Warriors did score a touchdown from the red zone Saturday, when Schager hit Tylan Hines with a 17-yard scoring pass on the opening possession of the second half.

But UH must improve on its woeful short game if it hopes to turn things around and finish with more than just the two wins it has against Delaware State and Northern Iowa — both from the lower FCS.

The Warriors have scored touchdowns on just 12 of their 22 times to the red zone.

Every visit deep in the opponents’ territory must be maximized, especially when you give the ball away more than you take it away from your foes.

And the bottom line now, more than halfway through the season, is that UH’s opponents outscore it by a little less than four points per game. That just happens to be the difference between a field goal and a touchdown and point-after.