RUSTON, La. — Maybe Hawai'i defensive coordinator Jerry Glanville, known for leaving football tickets for Elvis, should have reserved some at "will call" for the Warriors' usually aggressive run defense last night.

Louisiana Tech relied on its surprising running attack to control the clock and then the Warriors in a 46-14 rout before 16,242 towel-waving fans at Joe Aillet Stadium.

"I don't know who was out there on defense but it wasn't the Warriors," UH outside linebacker Tanuvasa Moe said after the Bulldogs rushed for 327 yards and four touchdowns. "We're a tackling team. We're an aggressive team. That team didn't show up tonight. We just didn't do our part and make plays. We let them slip off (attempted tackles). We can't do that. We're the Warriors. We have to play aggressive."

Glanville said: "They lined up and they kicked our butts. The bottom line is, they deserved it, because they kicked our butts."

Sophomores Mark Dillard and Freddie Franklin each rushed for two touchdowns. Dillard also gained a career-high 157 yards on 15 carries. The Bulldogs never punted, and scored on eight of their first nine possessions (stopped only by the expiration of the first half).

The thing was, the Bulldogs were working with a revised game plan. The original blueprint called for the Bulldogs to open with a few running plays, inducing the Warriors to congest the tackle box, and then turning loose quarterback Matt Kubik. But after the Warriors drove 78 yards on their second possession to go ahead, 7-3, Tech coach Jack Bicknell decided to go to Plan B.

"I was scared to death of that offense," Bicknell said of UH's four-wide passing schemes. "Early in the game, I said to myself, 'We're not going to be able to stop those guys. I love that offense. They do such a good job with it, and the quarterback (Colt Brennan) is such a great player. I wanted to keep it away from them. The way to take time off the clock is to run the ball, so I said, 'Let's run.' "

Behind an imposing and active offensive line, led by center Marcus Stewart, the Bulldogs three running backs — Dillard, Franklin and freshman Patrick Jackson — took turns weaving through or sprinting past the Warriors' blitzing defense.

"We only have a few running plays, so we tried to make the best of them," Stewart said. "We don't have more than 10."

And that was all they needed. Dillard, who can run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds and 100 meters in 10.3 seconds, broke away for scoring runs of 59 and 32 yards. Franklin was untouched on both of his 4-yard scoring runs.

"The whole offensive line kicked butt the whole night," said Jackson, who added 76 yards. "The holes were huge. With an offensive line like the one we've got, all three of the running backs could have gone through at the same time."

It started in the middle, with Stewart, the Bulldogs' strongest player, repeatedly blocking the nose tackle to the side and then going after an inside linebacker. "When he starts getting push — ooh — things are nice for the running backs," Jackson said.

But the Warriors claimed their nose tackle's hands were tied, in the figurative sense. In UH's 3-4 alignment, the nose tackle is trained to fend off — but not grab — the center.

"Our assignment was to hold up the center so he doesn't get up to our (inside) linebackers," nose tackle Keala Watson said. "But the referees were telling us that's illegal. We've done it every game. The referees were on us all night."

What's more, the nose tackle's favorite sidekick, defensive left end Melila Purcell III, suffered a partially torn knee ligament on Dillard's 59-yard run in the first quarter. Purcell will undergo a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) today to determine the severity of the injury.

"Mel is a big part of our defense," defensive right end Ikaika Alama-Francis said.

The Bulldogs, who had possession for 37 minutes, 36 seconds, kept drives alive by converting 10 of their first 12 third-down plays. In the previous three games, they converted 29 percent of their third-down plays.

Kubik, the quarterback, said the Bulldogs were able to counter the Warriors' third-down blitzes by adding blockers on runs — they used two tight ends and an H-back — or lofting screens over the on-rushing defenders.

"If you're a boxer facing a slugger, you have to duck and move," Kubik said. "That's what we did."

The Warriors, meanwhile, could not keep pace. Their first possession ended with running back Nate Ilaoa's lost fumble, leading to a Bulldog field goal. Ryan Grice-Mullen dropped two third-down passes, Davone Bess dropped another.

The Bulldogs claimed the Warriors' were tipping their plays. Linebacker Jeremy Hamilton said when the Warriors aligned three receivers to one side, the primary route would be dictated by the position of the running back. If he's on the same side as the three receivers, the primary target will run and out route; if he's on the other side, the route will go toward the middle.

"I don't think it was anything big," said Brennan, UH's quarterback. "We had guys wide open all over the field. We didn't execute. We dropped balls. We had bad passes. We had bad reads. It was everything. I don't think it was anything they were doing. It was what we were doing to ourselves."

The Bulldogs, who led 23-14 at the intermission, scored three touchdowns in the first eight minutes of the third quarter.

"By mid-third quarter, the game was almost out of reach," Brennan said. "We were saying to each other, 'Let's duke it out and fight.' But everybody was losing steam. That's the way it goes sometimes."

Reach Stephen Tsai at stsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.