“Watch the knee pads, watch the knee pads on No. 5,” Navy assistant football coaches loudly beseeched the sideline officials Saturday night.

Sure enough, twice the officials removed University of Hawaii slotback John Ursua from the game for this year’s newly scrutinized equipment violation of not covering his knee pads.

“ ‘Hey,’ one of their coaches told me, ‘that’s the only way we could slow you (guys) down,’ ” Ursua said afterward.

On a night when little else seemed to work against the rampaging Rainbow Warriors offense, even this desperation gambit fell short in Hawaii’s 59-41 victory over the Midshipmen.

Ursua still got what is becoming his requisite two touchdowns a game among 10 catches for 167 yards as quarterback Cole McDonald spread six touchdown passes — believed by a Navy spokesman to be the most thrown against the Midshipmen in the academy’s 138-year football history — and 428 yards among the can-you-top-this receiver corps.

It added up to the ’Bows’ highest scoring output in eight seasons. Not since plundering Nevada-Las Vegas 59-21 in the final regular-season game of 2010 has UH dropped as many points on a Football Bowl Subdivision opponent.

An offensive tsunami that began with a 28-0 start and scores on the first five series brought the assembled 27,284 — the largest crowd since the 2014 opener against Washington — to their feet early and often, creating one Halawa din, the likes of which haven’t been heard in the aging rust palace in years.

The ovation that sent the ’Bows into the locker room at halftime up 38-14 was reminiscent of championship seasons past.

“I loved hearing the fans get loud again,” said Michael Carter, the quarterback of the 1992 Holiday Bowl champions, from a south end zone vantage point. “This is great to hear again.”

On the way to their 2-0 start the ’Bows are averaging 51 points a game, more than double the 22.8 of 2017 that preceded their return to a form of the run-and-shoot offense.

Not bad for a team that is, according to some of its players, only hitting at about 75 percent efficiency at this point. “If we clean some things up we could probably hit 60 or 70 points,” said JoJo Ward, who got his first two career touchdowns among six catches for 161 yards

Indeed, there were four dropped passes among the 41 attempts (and 30 completed) by McDonald.

But except for some second-half struggles again this week it was hard to find much not to like about the home opener. The defense rose to the occasion early and then stood tall when the Midshipmen threatened to make a game of it, closing to 10 points twice (38-28 and 45-35).

Special teams weighed in with a blocked punt and 19-yard touchdown return by Max Hendrie. And penalties, an area in which the ’Bows have languished among the bottom 15 percent of the FBS over the past four years, amounted to just one for 5 yards.

“I’m glad to be 2-0,” Rolovich said afterward. “I want to be 3-0.”

The way things are going you’d have to say this is their best shot at that since it was last achieved in the Sugar Bowl-bound season of 2007.

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