LAS VEGAS (UNLVRebels.com) – UNLV will travel to downtown Phoenix to face Kansas in the 2023 Guaranteed Rate Bowl at Chase Field on December 26, organizers announced Sunday. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. PT and the game will be televised by ESPN.
 
The Rebels (9-4/6-2), who finished in a three-way tie for the Mountain West regular-season championship, return to a bowl game for the first time in a decade and will play the Jayhawks (8-4/5-4) for the first time in 20 years and third time overall as the schools split a home-and-home series in 2002-03.
 
UNLV, which is 3-1 all-time in bowl games, replaced a Big Ten Conference team in the bowl's usual matchup against a Big 12 opponent. Last year's Guaranteed Rate Bowl saw Wisconsin down Oklahoma State.
 
The game, which will be its 34th edition, is played in the retractable-roofed home of MLB's Arizona Diamondbacks. This will mark only the third time the Rebels will go out of state to play a postseason bowl game as UNLV traveled to the now-defunct California Bowl in Fresno in 1984 and its most-recent bowl game was played on January 1, 2014, in the Heart of Dallas Bowl at Cotton Bowl Stadium.
 
UNLV is led by 2023 Mountain West Coach of the Year Barry Odom, who in his first season at the school has led the program to its most victories since 1984 and earned an opportunity to reach the 10-win plateau for only the third time in school history. The Rebels boast a lineup filled with a school-record six First Team All-Mountain West honorees and multiple All-America candidates in WR candidate Ricky White III, who is fresh from breaking the UNLV single-season receiving yards record with 1,386 on 81 catches; MW Freshman of the Year quarterback Jayden Maiava, record-smashing Groza Award finalist and MW Special Teams Player of the Year kicker Jose Pizano; and the nation's leading kick returner Jacob De Jesus, who has 1,019 combined yards on kickoff and punt returns.
 
Ticket information for the Guaranteed Rate Bowl is available online at UNLVTickets.com.