LAS VEGAS (UNLVRebels.com) - UNLV 2015 Men's Soccer Schedule

It will be no easy path for the UNLV men's soccer team in its quest to reach the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year as the Rebels' 2015 slate was released Friday. UNLV will begin the season playing five of its first seven games away from Las Vegas. The Rebels will then finish the regular season with three straight on the road, followed by the 2015 WAC Tournament, which will be held in Kansas City, Mo., on the campus of UMKC.

"We are very excited about our 2015 schedule and the strength of competition that we will be facing," said UNLV head coach Rich Ryerson. "We will be playing teams from the Big West, West Coast, Missouri Valley, Atlantic 10 and Pac-12 conferences, and that should lead to a very strong strength of schedule. That can only help us reach our goal of a return trip to the NCAA Tournament."

For the third straight season the Rebels will open on the road, as UNLV will play a pair of road games in California with a Friday, Aug. 28 contest at Cal Poly in Sal Luis Obispo followed by an Aug. 30 game at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. This will be the third time in the last seven years that UNLV will open the season with a road game at Cal Poly, as the Rebels claimed a double-overtime 1-0 upset victory over the 23rd-ranked Mustangs in 2009, before falling by a 1-0 score in the 2011 opener. UNLV and LMU last played in the 2012 season, a 1-1 overtime tie.

The Rebels will play just three non-conference home games in 2015, with two of them coming on the first weekend of September in the Johann Memorial Classic. UNLV will host Saint Joseph's on Sept. 4 and close out against Pacific on Sept. 6, while Utah Valley will round out the tournament field. The Saint Joseph's contest will be the first ever between the two schools, while UNLV last played Pacific in the 1985 season.

The Rebels will then play in Utah Valley's home tournament the following weekend, where they will face Mercer on Sept. 11 and Bradley on Sept. 13 in a pair of neutral contests in Orem. That will make the third straight year UNLV and Bradley have faced off, while the Rebels have never met Mercer in men's soccer before. UNLV will again play away from home the next weekend with a Sept. 20 road contest against San Diego State. It will mark the fourth meeting between the teams, all in San Diego, since they were conference rivals in the MPSF in 2004.

UNLV will begin a stretch of six of eight games at home on Sept. 27, closing out the non-conference slate by hosting Gonzaga. That's the start of a three-game homestand, as the Rebels will then open defense of their WAC regular-season championship by hosting Houston Baptist on Oct. 2 and Texas-Rio Grand Valley on Oct. 4. UTRGV is a new university that is arising from the consolidation of Texas-Pan American and the University of Texas at Brownsville, while UTPA was already a member of the WAC, though it last sponsored men's soccer 18 years ago.

After a two-game trip to the Golden State for games at San Jose State (Oct. 9) and CSU Bakersfield (Oct. 11), the Rebels will host another three-game homestand, coming against Incarnate Word (Oct. 18), Seattle (Oct. 23) and a Senior Day contest with Utah Valley on Oct. 25. That leaves the Rebels playing their final three games of the regular season on the road (UMKC, Air Force and Grand Canyon). UNLV will then go to Missouri for this year's WAC Tournament, which is being hosted by UMKC to help generate interest for the Men's College Cup to be held in the city in December.

"Our trip to Kansas City to play UMKC during the regular season will give us a chance to play at the site of this year's conference tournament and hopefully prepare us in our bid to defend out conference title," said Ryerson. "We are hoping for great things this upcoming season, and we look to use last year's results as a springboard towards reaching those goals."

The Rebels won the WAC regular-season title last year with a 7-2-1 record, and their overall record of 14-5-3 was the best for the team since 1988 as they earned the first trip to the NCAA Tournament since that same season. UNLV will bring back six starters from last year's squad, while is also bringing in what rates as the strongest recruiting class yet under Ryerson.