UTEP at North Texas, 8:00 PM Eastern, BEIN Sports
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The Under the Radar Game of the Day turns to Conference USA tonight, but not to focus on the conference leading Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders. Instead, tonight’s game focuses in on the amazing mid-season turnaround that we have seen from Tim Floyd’s UTEP Miners. The Miners (9-15 overall, 7-5 in conference) won their second D1 game of the season, in the Charleston Classic against Western Michigan. They then proceeded to lose their next 12 consecutive games, including suffering home losses to the likes of Maryland-Eastern Shore, Northwestern State and Southeastern Louisiana. That all changed when they broke the streak on January 12 with a double overtime win over Florida International. The Miners have won 7 of their last 9 games since the losing streak, including a huge home upset win over Middle Tennessee two weeks ago. Dominic Artis (yes, the same player who used to be at Oregon) came on strong with a 13 point, 7 rebound effort in the win over Middle and a 20 point, 10 assist effort last time out in a win over Southern Miss. In fact, Artis has now had double-digit assists 5 times this season and has flirted with a triple-double several times.
North Texas enters tonight’s game at 7-17 overall and 1-10 in CUSA play. The Mean Green picked up their first league win last week at Florida Atlantic behind 21 points and 9 rebounds from J-Mychal Reese. With only 6 regular season games left, UNT needs to put together a winning streak if they want to avoid the bottom of the conference standings and take a shot at qualifying for the conference tournament (only the top 12 of 14 teams will play). Tonight, they will attempt to slow down the red-hot Miners; however, with the amazing turnaround that UTEP has had, that simply may not be possible.