After a lengthy off-season, the UNLV football team officially opened its fall training camp on Aug. 2. The Rebels, under head coach Barry Odom, enters his second season after a 9-5 record, a Mountain West Championship appearance, and a bowl game appearance that the Rebels haven’t reached in over a decade during the 2023-24 campaign.
The Rebels have multiple returning veterans from last year’s squad, including Ricky White III, Jacob De Jesus, Cameron Oliver, and Jackson Woodard, but enter this year with more speed, strength, quickness, change of direction, and explosiveness, with new incoming transfers including Jaden Bradley, Tony Grimes, Casey Cain, Jaylen Catalan, and Antonio Doyle Jr.
The Rebels enter preseason camp featuring three senior quarterbacks: Matthew Sluka, a transfer out of Holy Cross; Hajj-Malik Williams, a transfer out of Cambell; and long-time Rebel Cameron Friel, all currently fighting for the starting role.
“The thing that makes this team so special is that everybody’s on the same page,” Friel said. “We came up short last year, so that’s the chip on everyone’s shoulder. Right now, we’re going to make it back to where we were last year, and we’re going to go out there and win the championship game.”
“Previously at Holy Cross, I could get away with not knowing my plays at night or not coming to watch films, but here, its best man goes,” Sluka said. “I’ve been doing everything I possibly can to get ready.”
“We have three great guys and great competition that allows all of us to be our best selves,” Williams said. You have to put points on the board and protect the football; whoever does that the most wins the job.”
The Rebels’ message has remained the same throughout the Odom era: play with a winning attitude and show up with a championship mindset in pursuit of winning the program’s third Mountain West Championship and the program’s first since the 2007-08 season.
“I’m competing with the guy next to me, and he’s going to make me as good as I can be,” Woodard said. “That change of attitude is necessary on the field; we got to be champions; we got to practice like champions. Constantly reminding myself to be a champion, act like a champion, practice like a champion.”
The Rebels will continue fall training camp until Aug. 23 to prepare for their first regular season matchup against the University of Houston Cougars during the teams’ first road trip on Aug. 31.
“We have the ultimate goal of competing and winning a championship, and we’ve got systematic things in place, in my opinion, to do that,” Odom said. “This is an opportunity to leave our legacy at a university in this city, and I feel a great responsibility to get that done as the head coach.”
