LOGAN, Utah — The nearby Sherwood Hills Resort, where the University of Hawai'i football team has been ensconced, is, as the signs proclaim, well known hereabouts as the home of the "Haunted Forest."

Replete with trolls, ghouls and chillingly authentic-looking props, it is billed as a Halloween-time "six acres of hell."

Of course, time was when any UH road trip along the Wasatch Mountains was a scary experience unto itself for other reasons.

If the opposition alone wasn't enough to do in most Hawai'i teams, then the travel, altitude or weather — take your choice — surely did.

Yet, if there is a Warrior team that should rise above all that, it is one that takes the field at Romney Stadium against Utah State today at 10 a.m., Hawai'i time.

If there is a UH football team capable of not only beating but laying waste to all that has beset previous Warriors in a combined 3-16 record in the Beehive State against Utah State, Brigham Young and Utah, you have to figure it is this one.

And not just because these guys show up as 26-point favorites on the Las Vegas betting line against a 1-7 opponent, either. After all, Fresno State arrived here as a 28-point pick a month ago and was slapped with its most ignominious defeat in ages, 13-12.

This is mostly about the Warriors, for whom there has been a little something different on the road this year from the September start. OK, a lot different. We've seen it not just in blowout wins at New Mexico State and Fresno State, but in close losses at Alabama and Boise State. Places where falling behind in the past has — or would have — meant routs but didn't this year.

To date, this has been a team with a sharp road focus and determination rarely seen in UH squads of recent vintage. Indeed, there is a certain confidence if not swagger with this team. Not a foolish bravado but a sense of mission and attention to business that few recent Warrior teams have taken on the road with them. The kind that has carried them to a 2-2 record away from home so far this season and suggests that playing at 4,500 feet or in temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s will not render them beaten before kickoff.

A lot of it, you suspect, is senior leadership. With so many fifth- and sixth-year seniors, they have seen it all and learned from it. Guys like Leonard Peters, Nate Ilaoa, Samson Satele, Tala Esera, Ikaika Alama-Francis and Melila Purcell, who experienced the disappointments of last year's 5-7 season and have bigger things in mind for this one. Indeed, there is a lot invested in this season and, after a 6-2 (4-1 Western Athletic Conference) start, the Warriors are beginning to see what the payoff could look like and how huge it could be.

For one thing, they can lock up a place in the postseason, securing a berth in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl, with a victory today. For another, the Warriors have to keep on winning to have a shot at getting a piece of the WAC title should Boise State stumble in its regular-season finale at Nevada. Not to be forgotten is that their five-game winning streak is edging the Warriors to the doorstep of a place in the national polls if they can keep winning.

And, how many times have the Warriors gone into their final road game of the season with those kind of possibilities still within reach?

But, then, as they should prove today, this has been a very different UH team on the road, too.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.