Rebels hope home games equate to bowl berth

Editor's note: This is the fifth in a nine-part series previewing Mountain West Conference football. Stories in projected order of finish (last-to-first) from the league's preseason media poll. Tuesday: No. 5 UNLV.

And with a Rebel yell — more, more, more.

Home games, that is.

For the second consecutive season, UNLV has bucked the tradition of most Mountain West Conference football programs and avoided an even home/away split in its 12-game schedule. The Rebels are once again slated to play three of their four nonleague games at Sam Boyd Stadium.

"I love the fact that we have seven home games," said UNLV coach Mike Sanford, whose squad will play host to BYU, Utah, Colorado State and San Diego State in conference play.

Sanford also likes that the Rebels open the upcoming season with three consecutive home games — Sacramento State, Oregon State and Hawaii. It's the first such start in 20 years for the program.

And it carries a lot of promise. Nine of the 11 wins UNLV has had in its four seasons under Sanford have come at home.

A strong start could propel the Rebels to their first bowl game since 2000. They came within one game of qualifying last season, falling short with an unexpected 42-21 season-ending loss at lowly San Diego State.

"I feel good about the improvement we made last year over the previous years, but it wasn't as good as it could have been," Sanford said. "We had some frustrating moments. We had a frustrating end. We had an opportunity to be bowl-eligible but ended up not getting it done at the end. I still have a bad feeling in my stomach and our players do, too.

"It's been the team's primary motivation in the offseason.

"We've got to find a way to finish," Sanford said. "I think we've done everything we can do up to this point to make sure that happens. Now we've just got to do it."

STRENGTHS: Wide receiver Ryan Wolfe and linebacker Jason Beauchamp were UNLV's lone representatives on the Mountain West's preseason all-conference team. The seniors earned all-league honors last season and are poised to make an impact once again. Wolfe led the Rebels with 88 catches for 1,040 yards and six touchdowns in 2008. Beauchamp, meanwhile, topped the MWC with 127 tackles. Six of his stops were behind the line of scrimmage.

Another Rebel with a cause is junior quarterback Omar Clayton, who led the team in total offense last year with 228.6 yards per game.