After Saturday night, it is the question you didn’t want to ponder but can no longer avoid asking:

Will the University of Hawaii football team win a Mountain West Conference game this season?

The way the head-shaking 35-23 loss to New Mexico unfolded really makes you wonder if the Warriors are destined to go 0-for-the-MWC in their inaugural season.

Here they are 1-5 overall and 0-3 in their new conference home, and unless they significantly pick things up or an opponent self destructs in front of them, it is hard to see how the Warriors will avoid their first winless conference season since the infamous 0-12 (0-8 Western Athletic Conference) campaign of 1998.

As it is, the 1-5 start is their worst since the 3-9 season of 2000.

After three consecutive blowouts, this was, finally, an opponent the Warriors could go helmet-to-helmet with and a game they were capable of winning.

But they didn’t.

For all the resolve the Warriors showed in coming back from a 21-0 deficit and belated fireworks they lit on offense, the Warriors came up empty.

And nobody in the Aloha Stadium crowd of 27,833 knew that better or mourned it more than coach Norm Chow. "We didn’t win the game," Chow said afterward. "We didn’t win the game."

And the opportunities to get one in the Mountain West are getting scarce. After an open week, the Warriors play consecutive road games at Colorado State and Fresno State. Then they draw Boise State back here and play at Air Force before closing out with Nevada-Las Vegas.

Saturday night’s three-point spread as underdogs might be as close as they get the rest of the way in the conference.

If not for the presence of transitioning Football Bowl Subdivision member South Alabama (1-5), a nonconference foe, in the Dec. 1 season finale, we might be wondering if the Warriors could win another game this season.

The reasons are all-too-familiar by now. They couldn’t make the big plays or even enough third-down conversions (4-for-14) on offense or come up with the key stops on defense when they needed them. And, they couldn’t avoid the telltale mistakes and turnovers. Not even Mike Edwards’ electrifying 100-yard third-quarter kickoff return for a touchdown could balance out a three-turnover difference.

The one thing the Warriors could absolutely not allow to happen Saturday was what occurred: They fell behind early, and deep.

"We’re the team that has to be ahead or even in the game with our style of offense," acknowledged Bob Davie, the New Mexico coach. "It is 1:30 or 2 in the morning in Albuquerque, so I knew this would drain on us. I knew what to expect. I knew they would fight to the very end and that’s just what happened."

The Lobos, who aren’t all that different from UH in many respects, are, however, 4-3 (and 1-1 in the MWC) right now because they did enough things right.

"We’re piecing this thing together right now," Davie said. "We’ll take ’em any way we can get ’em and that’s where we are right now in this program."

And, as Saturday night underlined, the Warriors aren’t.

After coughing up $650,000 to underwrite opponents’ travel here as a condition of membership in their new home, is this what the Warriors will have to show for it?

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