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A companion to our daily Three Stars of the Day, we present the top three Games of the Night.

 

A - Northwestern

BYU (25-9, 13-3)

San Diego State (22-11, 10-6)

UNLV (30-7, 12-4)

Utah (11-19, 6-10)

Other (Air Force, New Mexico, Wyoming, etc)

New Mexico Lobos

 

Overall Rank: #96

- Getting Steve Alford (assuming it official happens) is a steal for New Mexico. His 152-106 record might not be overwhelming, but Alford brings a few things to the table that you have to love.

A) Publicity. No one particularly paid any attention to the firing of Ritchie McKay.. and except for some love for Danny Granger, no one has paid any attention to New Mexico the past few years.

Listening to Dukie V, you'd think Marquette's win over the Blue Devils last night was the biggest in the program's history. The fact is though that Marquette easily had the best player on the court in point guard Dominic James. James easily outclassed Greg Paulus with 25 and 7 assists as compared to his counterparts 7 and 1. Despite what V thinks (saying this man's full name is simply too painful), beating Duke doesn't automatically mean you're a lock to be a top 10 team all season. Both of these teams have flaws that will be exposed in the future.

Flipping back and forth, I also caught much of UCLA's impressive 73-68 win over Kentucky. While 18 points and 5 boards isn't Earth shattering, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute's play was extremely impressive. This is a kid who didn't score double digits until his 6th game last year and never had more than 15 all last season. With 24 in the season opener, and 18 last night, Mbah a Moute is on pace to be one of the season's most improved players. Its hard to imagine anyone else that has improved so much in the past two years. Perhaps Josh McRoberts should take some lessons from Luc Richard..

Capsules of teams ranked 131st to 144th in CHN's 144 Teams in 144 Days college preview.