With Nick Rolovich calling the offense, Nevada coach Brian Polian’s first three encounters with Hawaii ended decidedly in the Wolf Pack’s favor.

With Rolovich on the opposite sideline on Saturday, fortunes surged to the Rainbow Warriors in Hawaii’s 38-17 victory in their Mountain West Conference opener at Aloha Stadium.

True, Nevada arrived in Halawa on the tail end of an arduous two-week, nearly 9,000-mile stretch with games at Purdue and at Hawaii on consecutive Saturdays, while the Rainbow Warriors had a bye week to recharge from their nonconference journeys. While Polian did note that fact after the game, he stopped short of drawing a cause-and-effect connection to Saturday’s outcome.

“Nick and his staff did a terrific job,” Polian said. “They had an extra week to get ready for us — that schematically is a big advantage. I’m not taking any credit away from the job that they did. They executed, they beat our butts.”

After joining the Nevada coaching staff following a four-year stint as a UH assistant, Rolovich came out ahead in each of the Pack’s meetings with UH during his four years in Reno, starting with a 69-24 thumping at Aloha Stadium in 2012 when the Wolf Pack rushed for 355 yards.

Going up against another former employer, Rolovich helped orchestrate a UH attack that rolled up 344 of its 566 total yards on the ground on Saturday.

When Nevada took possession, the Wolf Pack struggled to subdue UH’s pressure and the Rainbow Warriors finished with four sacks among seven tackles for loss. The Wolf Pack didn’t reach the end zone until Tyler Stewart connected with Wyatt Demps on a 9-yard touchdown pass with 10:09 left. Jaxson Kincaide’s touchdown run with 5:02 left occurred when most of the crowd of 20,972 already had headed home.

“They had a great plan. They obviously did a great job with the extra week to prepare because there were a bunch of wrinkles in there that we had not seen,” Polian said. “But in the end they kicked our butts and there’s no excuse.

“Clearly they had more juice tonight than we did, by a lot.”

The final score dampened the homecomings for two local high school products on the Nevada roster.

Kamehameha graduate Kalei Meyer made his second career start at defensive tackle in his first appearance at Aloha Stadium since facing Punahou on Oct. 25, 2013 in the final game of his senior season.

Meyer got to hang out with family members on Friday and get a taste of the poke he’d been craving.

Saturday wasn’t quite so satisfying.

“I was excited to come back and play. Things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. We gotta play better next time, that’s it,” said Meyer, who posted a tackle while sharing time in the middle of the Wolf Pack defensive front.

“The first series they came out showing a little bit different than what we were expecting in terms of how they were running the ball and airing it out a little bit more than expected.”

Saint Louis graduate and sophomore linebacker Jake Lacaden also posted a tackle, his first of the season and second of his career, in his return to Aloha Stadium.