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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, NV

Stream: CBSSN

Wyoming +4½ -110 over UNLV

10:30 PM EST. A few weeks ago, Jay Sawvel was coaching for his job in Laramie. Now he's coaching for a championship game. That's what three straight wins will do for you. The Cowboys were supposed to be an afterthought this year, a team rebuilding around a quarterback from the FCS ranks, and instead they're 5-3, they're 4-1 in the Mountain West, and if they keep winning, the conference title game comes to Laramie for the first time in a decade. The winner of this one stays right in the race, a game back of New Mexico in the loss column, with the head-to-head over the other. And both of them still have to play the Lobos.

The whole turnaround runs through Tyler Hughes. He came over from William & Mary with his old coordinator, Christian Taylor, and it took a while for the two of them to get in gear. Now they're in gear. Over the three-game winning streak, Hughes has completed 70 percent of his passes and run for 421 yards and five touchdowns. He's the whole offense. He runs it, he throws it, and when the play breaks down, he just takes off. Wyoming doesn't score much, but they don't have to, because the defense has been the constant all year, right where it was a year ago, one of the stingiest units in the league. And the Cowboys are coming off a bye, rested, while UNLV just went the distance with a winless team.

Because here's the thing about UNLV: the offense is fun, and the defense is a mess. Jackson Arnold is Dan Mullen's latest quarterback project, and he's a good one, a dual-threat who can throw it and run it, and Jai'Den Thomas is a home-run threat every time he touches it. But the defense just gave up 493 yards to Northern Illinois, a team that hasn't won a game all year, and the week before that, Air Force ran for 430 yards on them. That's 670 rushing yards in two games. And now they get Tyler Hughes, the best running quarterback in the conference, coming off a bye, with a defense behind him that doesn't give up anything. That's a bad matchup for the Rebels, and Sawvel knows it. He watched the NIU tape and called it a C-game, and he's being generous.

So the number is four and a half, and we're supposed to believe UNLV is going to beat this team by a touchdown in Las Vegas? Wyoming can win this game outright. They're the better team right now, they're rested, they don't make mistakes, and they're playing for a championship game. The four and a half is just the cushion. And there should be one decent football team nicknamed the Cowboys this year, and we're glad it's the one in Laramie.

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