BOISE, Idaho - For the third straight year and the second time in 12 months, UNLV walked into Albertsons Stadium with a Mountain West championship on the line.

And for the third straight year, Boise State walked out with the trophy.

The Broncos jumped out to a 21-0 lead, hit UNLV again with a back-breaking explosive early in the fourth quarter, and closed out a 38-21 win Friday night, extending their grip on the league and their dominance over the Rebels on the blue turf.

UNLV, now 10-3, battled back from three touchdowns down to twice make it a one-score game, but never got the stop-plus-score sequence it needed to truly flip the momentum.

“Losing sucks. It absolutely sucks,” Dan Mullen said afterward. “But I’m proud of our guys’ effort. Nobody knew each other last January, and this team came together to compete for a championship.”

The opening script looked like the nightmare version of everything UNLV talked about avoiding.

Boise answered with what it does in these games: explosives.

On the Broncos’ second possession, Maddux Madsen ripped a 44-yard strike to Cameron Bates, then hit Quinton Brown and Latrell Caples to move inside the red zone. A swing pass to running back Dylan Riley on 3rd-and-7 turned into a 9-yard touchdown and a 14-0 lead late in the first quarter.

In the second, Boise strung together a 12-play, 67-yard drive that looked a lot like the October meeting: steady runs from Sire Gaines, manageable third downs, and a 7-yard score to Bates on a quick out against pressure. 21-0, Broncos.

Asked if it feels like Boise is the final boss of this era of UNLV football, veteran linebacker Marsel McDuffie didn’t duck it.

“You work so hard to get to this moment. Third straight year against the same team,” he said. “You do everything you can to win. Sometimes it just doesn’t go the way you want it to… I’m proud of my team and the way we came out and competed 60 minutes.”

Down three scores, UNLV finally found its rhythm midway through the second quarter and reminded everyone why it came in with the league’s No. 1 offense.

Backed up at his own 5, Mullen dialed up some of the creativity that defined this season:

On 3rd-and-4, Anthony Colandrea broke contain and sprinted to the pylon for a 5-yard touchdown, cutting it to 21-7 and finally quieting the blue for a moment.

After Boise answered with yet another explosive, a 35-yard Gaines run into a 39-yard shot to Malik Sherrod for a 28–7 lead, Colandrea and the Rebels refused to fold.

In just 1:01 before the half, UNLV went 75 yards:

At halftime, the game felt a lot more even than the score:

What wasn’t even: the explosives and the mistakes. Boise had touchdowns of 39 and 9 through the air, plus gains of 44, 46 and 35. UNLV had the early fumble, a missed field goal and three false starts before the break.

Coming out of the locker room, the blueprint for UNLV was obvious: stack stops, steal a possession, and lean on the run game that was averaging over eight yards per carry at the half.

The defense did its part early in the third quarter, forcing Boise to settle into a punt-heavy stretch and even surviving a short field after a stalled Rebel drive. Madsen and the Broncos went without a score on their first two possessions of the half.

The offense had chances to seize momentum.

On the first drive of the third, UNLV moved into Boise territory with a Colandrea keeper and a 7-yard completion to Bradley. Then:

What could’ve been a statement drive ended in a punt and a familiar feeling: behind the chains, behind on the scoreboard.

Later in the quarter, UNLV finally made Boise pay for a mistake. With the Broncos backed up, the Rebels forced a punt and got the ball at the Boise 22 after a long return and a penalty. Mullen reached back into the bag again…this time a direct snap to Earle up the middle from the 3. Touchdown. 28–21, with 2:59 left in the third.

“At that point it was just, ‘Why not give it everything you’ve got?’” McDuffie said. “Thirty minutes left. We just kept going.”

If there was one drive that summed up this matchup since 2023, it was the first Boise possession of the fourth quarter.

The Broncos opened the period facing 3rd-and-3 at the UNLV 47. The Rebels brought pressure. Coverage busted for a split second. Madsen found Chase Penry on a crosser for 46 yards down to the 1.

Two snaps later, Gaines punched in a 1-yard score. 35-21, Broncos, just 1:39 into the quarter.

“That was a miscommunication,” Mullen said. “We had the blown coverage right there in our man coverage… We double-teamed one guy and nobody covered the other. When you’re playing a top-level team and you make those mistakes, they capitalize.”

UNLV still had time, but the margin for error was gone. The next drive reached the Boise 30 before a jet sweep was blown up, followed by a 12-yard sack and another negative run. A false start on fourth down turned a 4th-and-27 into 4th-and-32 and another punt.

From there, Boise did what a championship program does: chew clock, stay ahead of the sticks, and make the one extra play when it needed it. A methodical 7-play, 52-yard march ended in a 50-yard field goal and a 38–21 lead with 3:13 remaining.

UNLV’s final possession pushed to the Boise 27, but a 3rd-and-2 keeper lost two, and a 4th-and-4 throw fell incomplete over the middle. The Broncos took a knee on the other side and started their trophy celebration.

The box score looks like a coin flip until you zoom into the details.

“We made a lot of mistakes, both sides of the ball,” Mullen said. “In championship games, when you’re playing top-level teams, they don’t make a lot of mistakes… you make those mistakes and they capitalize, you’re not going to win the game.”

Colandrea missed some throws early and never quite found the high-efficiency rhythm he had most of the year, but he still accounted for 291 yards and two touchdowns and kept UNLV live into the fourth quarter.

“We figured out what they were doing on defense and started to execute those drives in the second half,” he said. “Later in the fourth quarter, we just couldn’t put it together, and that starts with me too.”

For UNLV:

Again: same matchup, same pattern. Boise’s explosives did more damage.

Friday night didn’t erase what this UNLV season has been or what it’s still building toward.

This team reached another Mountain West Championship Game, did it again on the road, and did it behind a quarterback who became one of the most productive offensive players in program history. The Rebels finished the year with double-digit wins, continued to reset national benchmarks for offensive consistency, and cemented themselves as one of the league’s most durable and competitive programs over a three-year stretch.

UNLV played the nation’s most stable version of Boise State for the third straight title game, a rare stretch that speaks less to a ceiling and more to a standard. Very few programs in the Group of Five are showing up on this stage repeatedly. UNLV now is one of them.

The offense remained explosive, finishing with 409 total yards, another 20-plus point outing, and sustained production despite facing the Mountain West’s deepest defensive front. Anthony Colandrea closed the season as a conference leader in touchdown passes, a top-three single-season passer in school history, and the engine behind an offense that never stopped attacking.

There are things to clean up; penalties, third-down efficiency, and minus-yard plays at critical moments, but those are details, not foundations.

This season is proof of momentum, not regression. It’s proof that UNLV isn’t visiting the championship stage anymore, it’s living there.

And the program leaves Albertsons Stadium without a trophy, but not without direction.