Ian Hershey is a phenomenal kicker. He hasn’t had many opportunities to prove it this fall, but he’s one of the better ones in the conference, a freshman with a huge leg and quiet confidence. When he signed with Idaho State last winter, he instantly became one of the team’s best acquisitions. We could go on and on with superlatives.

Hershey is a lot of great things. But when he becomes one of the Bengals’ best players for a game, like he was in ISU’s 43-3 loss to UC Davis Saturday night, his team is in trouble. Never had that been so obvious than in this ISU loss, the team’s eighth of the season, its worst setback all year.

“As I told them,” ISU coach Charlie Ragle said, “some of you guys are gonna be done because you’re seniors. The rest of you are gonna be done because you’re not playing here anymore.”

Hershey scored his team’s only points of the game, a 33-yard field goal in the first quarter after that first drive Ragle mentioned, and he delivered seven punts for a total of 279 yards, good for an average of 40 yards per punt. He landed four punts inside the 20. He supplied one that covered 52 yards. He was legitimately one of ISU’s best players in this game, which is two things: One, a real compliment. Two, an indication of how poorly his team’s offense and defense played.

That’s because much of the rest of the Bengals’ performance looked ugly. They lost three turnovers. They totaled only 150 yards. Quarterback Hunter Hays completed just 9 of 20 passes for 80 yards and one interception. ISU (1-8, 1-5 Big Sky) rushed for a total of 70 yards.

It prompts what feels like a fair question: What changed after that first drive, which looked promising? “I don’t know,” said Ragle, who coached this game from upstairs, a measure to preserve his health after undergoing surgery last week to address his atrial fibrillation condition. “If I did know that, we would have fixed it.”

On his postgame radio show, Ragle said this: “We’re not a very good football program or a very good football team.”

Everything Charlie Ragle said after ISU's blowout loss to UC Davis

Idaho State head coach Charlie Ragle had a lot to say after his group’s 43-3 loss to UC Davis Saturday night. It was the Bengals’ worst loss a…

The Bengals’ defense did not fare much better than their offense, at least not later in the game. That unit played well early, only allowing Davis to score a field goal off those three turnovers, but their luck did not last. Running back Ulonzo Gilliam carried 28 times for 132 yards and two scores for the Aggies, who tallied 543 total yards, torching the Bengals almost however they pleased. They could have scored 50. They showed sportsmanship by turning down the opportunity.

They showed ISU little sympathy otherwise. Quarterback Miles Hastings completed 25 of 33 passes for 270 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. On one occasion, he hit a short screen pass for a touchdown, extending his team’s lead to 22-3. On another, he threw an eight-yard touchdown pass to Trent Tompkins, who walked into the end zone to the tune of the final 43-3 margin.

But to Ragle, in this game, ISU faced issues far bigger than the scoreboard.

At halftime, Ragle said, tears formed in the eyes of coaches trying to get the most out of their players. “And it means more to the coaches,” Ragle said. In ISU’s previous game, an Oct. 22 defeat to Northern Arizona, he decried his team’s lack of effort. He did not sound impressed on that front after this loss to UC Davis. “When things go tough on these guys, they don’t know how to respond,” Ragle said. “When they get themselves in a pinch, they don’t know how to look at each other and say, OK, we got this — because they haven’t done it before.”

It stung Ragle because on some level, he thought his group could change. After the Bengals topped Cal Poly last month for their only win thus far, Ragle said, he thought the team could turn a corner. “And they didn’t do that. They just reverted back to their old ways,” Ragle said. “Because it’s habits.”

As this season approached its final stretch, Ragle has stressed the importance of his team’s final few games — not because of wins and losses, though he cares about those, but because he wants to see which players show they want to stick around. On Saturday night, he sounded like he was getting closer to making final decisions.

At the very least, this much is clear: Ragle is frustrated with his players’ effort, with what he sees as a lack of passion. He says he and his coaches understand the sacrifices necessary to win on Saturdays because they have been around the game. “And we just don’t have enough guys that right now understand that or want to make those sacrifices,” Ragle said. He took partial blame for this, explaining his health situation prevented him from being around the team more this week, but he said this: “We had a good game plan. They practiced hard all week. But this is what they do.”

Next weekend, ISU faces a road test against Weber State, which last checked in at No. 5 nationally in the Stats Perform Top 25 rankings. Ragle said he plans on bringing just 45-50 players, which would be far fewer than usual. “If I’m gonna lose,” Ragle said, “I’m gonna lose with guys it matters to.”

ISU has just two games left in its season. To the coaching staff, they will be less about wins and losses and more about players’ attitudes. Only time will tell, but that may color Idaho State’s program in the immediate future.