LAS VEGAS — It is something of a coincidence that the University of Hawai'i football team is in the middle of playing three consecutive road games for the first time since 1964.

But it is careful calculation more than casual coincidence that the Warriors find themselves here as part of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' first three-game home stretch to start a season in 20 years.

Fittingly in this city where the house sets the odds, UNLV is doing everything it can to assure an overdue postseason for the Rebels.

UNLV hasn't been to a bowl game in eight years and the feeling, indeed, the necessity is that the Rebels do it this year. It is the fifth season of head coach Mike Sanford's reclamation project and history tells the Rebels their best path to the postseason is through the hometown Sam Boyd Stadium. Maybe their only one.

Sanford is 12-37 at UNLV and 10 of those 12 victories have come at home. So, it wasn't happenstance that UNLV set it up to open by hosting Sacramento State, Oregon State and Hawai'i to begin the season.

The hope hereabouts was the Rebels might roar to a 3-0 start, putting them halfway to bowl eligibility before hitting play in the Mountain West Conference. But the bottom line is at least 2-1. So, after a head-shaking loss to the Beavers, 23-21, Saturday, that means UH, hot off a 38-20 win over Washington State, has become a "must" victory for UNLV.

The Rebels took care of business against Sacramento State, 38-3, in the opener and should have beaten Oregon State. If not for a controversial penalty that helped keep alive the drive that set up the Beavers' game-winning field goal, UNLV would be sitting pretty right now.

But, then, it seems like every time UNLV is on the verge of a breakthrough there is, instead, a disheartening step backward. Last season, for example, UNLV upset Arizona State and knocked off Iowa State and then proceeded to lose five games in a row.

Despite all that, UNLV still had a chance to reach bowl eligibility if it could beat woeful San Diego State (1-10). Instead, the Rebels stubbed their toe — and their season — in a 42-21 loss in the regular season finale.

This year the Rebels have 15 starters returning from that team that went 5-7. Most important, they have eight of them on defense, giving UNLV, which ranked 100th in scoring defense (32.6 points per game) last season the prospect of actually stopping somebody for the first time in several years. And they have that schedule.

When UNLV senior linebacker Jason Beauchamp began to write a blog for the Las Vegas Sun, he chose the title "Now or Never." Pointedly, he writes, because "the reason that the title is what it is is because I feel that of all the time I've been here, it has all led up to this."