HONOLULU, Ha. — Style points came in abundance.

After four games and a bye, Colorado State traveled to Hawaii to open conference play and set in motion their goal of becoming Mountain West champions.

Saturday night, the Rams (3-2) also wanted to set a tone for their second half of the year, and they did that with a 51-21 rout of the Rainbow Warriors (2-3, 0-2 MW) at Aloha Stadium.

“I think we did tonight, let everybody know we can pass the ball, run the ball the same,” CSU wideout Michael Gallup said. “We were pretty balanced tonight. It just sends a nice message to everybody to let them know we’re coming.”

The only person who could pull the reigns on Colorado State’s offense in the first half was their head coach and playcaller, Mike Bobo, and he didn’t decide to until just 24 seconds remained until halftime and CSU was backed up to the 15.

It might have surprised some, because when the Rams were leading 24-7 with 1:38 remaining he called a deep pass to Gallup, who responded with a 76-yard catch-and-run, setting up a 4-yard scoring run from Izzy Matthews, the final touches on a 31-7 lead at the break.

The Rams scored the first five times they had the ball, the first three touchdowns. The initial blows came on Nick Stevens connections with Detrich Clark, both on posts from the slot. The first covered 36 yards, the second 38, the two longest scoring plays of the season for the offense.

Couple it with a trio of three-and-out by the defense, and the Rams made it a no-doubter in short order.

“I was really proud, really of our whole team, the way we started the game,” Bobo said. “We wanted to start fast. A lot is made about this trip, coming this far, sometimes being asleep and not being able to handle things. We used the word dominate all last week. Well, it wasn’t dominate our play, we wanted to dominate with our focus throughout the game. I love how we started the game. We forced three straight three and outs defensively. Offensively, the guys executed at a high level.”

Stevens connected with tight end Dalton Fackrell for a 2-yard score on the first play of the second quarter before Wyatt Bryan drilled a 33-yard field goal that made it a 24-0 game.

Colorado State’s offense continued to roll coming out of the break behind another 300-yard passing day from Stevens and the second 200-yard receiving day from Gallup. They hooked up for a 29-yard score on the second drive of the third quarter as Stevens finished 18-of-22 passing for 354 yards and four scores. Gallup caught eight of those balls for 212 yards.

The second half started quick, the Rams needing just four plays to cover 77 yards, the final 19 on a run by Dalyn Dawkins, who rushed for 130 yards in the game, the first back for the team to break the century mark.

“It felt good after every touchdown,” Dawkins said. “We just felt more and more comfortable each time. That was an extra thing too, the defense stepping up big time early on.”

The Rams finally had to punt in the second half as they made the 4-minute offense their approach moving forward, but that worked too, with Matthews’ second touchdown of the night a on a 66-yard scoring run with 3:37 remaining.

Matthews finished with 95 yards in the game, and the Rams totaled 610 on offense, the best of the season and the Bobo era.

Hawaii would generate some offense, surpassing 400 yards of total offense behind quarterback Dru Brown, who threw for two touchdowns in the game, while running back Diocemy Saint Juste had a 1-yard rush for the host’s first score. The Rams’ defense would stop a fourth-quarter drive with a fumble, Max McDonald stripping receiver Dylan Collie in the red zone, with Josh Watson recovering.

They gave up 21 points, but Bobo said with a big lead they sat back in a zone and tried to cut down the big gainers, and they didn’t bring much pressure. When they had it, Brown was adept at avoiding it, save for a sack by Evan Colorito on the first series of the night. And Saint Juste, who was averaging better than 130 yards per game, finished 3 yards shy of 100.

But the Rams wrote a script for their trip to paradise, and it played out perfectly for the week. Now, message or not, they have to do it again.

And again.

“We talked about what we want to do, and that’s play for our conference championship,” Bobo said. “In college football, your conference championship’s every week. That was our mindset today, that this was a championship football game. Well, that’s going to be our same mindset next week. That’s everybody’s mindset in this league right now, and we’ve got to be mature enough to handle it.”

Mike Brohard: 970-635-3633, mbrohard@reporter-herald.com and twitter.com/mbrohard