In case you didn't notice, the video game is over.

Fast-break football had its positives—hey, it got Hawaii to two WAC championships and the Sugar Bowl. But the Warriors have evolved. And maybe just in time.

When June Jones called the plays, complaints abounded when things didn't go right—or when the receiver went right and the quarterback threw left. His run-and-shoot offense was too easy to figure out, or so the critics claimed.

The current Warriors, based on defense and ball control and a work-in-progress attack, are 3-3 and 2-1 in the conference—just where most of us thought they'd be at this point, though they took an unexpected route.

Some are struggling in adjusting to the chameleon offense, and I don't mean the players and coaches.

Despite back-to-back wins and generally improved all-around play, pockets of naysayers remain. A 24-14 win over LaTech? The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

There's already plenty of broken-record moaning about many things, including conservative play-calling and poor clock management.

It's called not giving an inferior opponent momentum headed into halftime. Somewhere along the line the expectation changed from doing the right thing in the long view of winning the game to trying to score three times in 49 seconds.

Some fans seem to fear not getting their money's worth in touchdowns more than a loss. Would you rather lose with the doctrine of June Jones than win with that of Dick Tomey?

I'd say the identity of the 2008 Warriors and Greg McMackin's style at this point falls right between those two UH icons and squarely in the land of a third; maybe we're in Bob Wagner country in some ways ... generally, not a bad place to be. Before the wheels fell off, Wagner did some wonderful things, including turning an offensive style questioned by many into an unstoppable machine.

And what gets lost in all this angst about the play-calling and the relative lack of touchdowns is the clutch defense and special teams play. After a while, it's not fortune and breaks—stout heart becomes part of your team's character.

On offense, watching Funaki is plenty exciting, even if every play isn't a pass and every pass isn't perfect. Now I know why “;Lost”; is so popular. What will Ron and Rolo cook up for him this week?

Jones used to say, “;We do what we do.”; Now it's, “;Nobody knows exactly what we're going to do, including us.”; It's a defensive coordinator's nightmare.

Boil it all down and what we saw Saturday night was a good old-fashioned, hard-hitting college football team that made fewer mistakes than its opponent. It was smart to get conservative on offense. With the lead, sometimes you get to a point where playing not to lose is the right way to go.

All of that probably won't be enough at Boise on Friday, and maybe that's the real fear of those unwilling to jump aboard.