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GAME NOTES: Members of the Western Athletic Conference break into the national spotlight tonight, as the New Mexico State Aggies and Idaho Vandals clash at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces.

Still with a chance to overtake Utah State for the top spot in the WAC standings before the league tournament begins the second week of March, the Aggies have won two straight and five of their last six outings heading into tonight's contest. On Saturday, NMSU posted an 84-78 win over the Pacific Tigers as part of BracketBusters weekend. The Aggies, who are 9-3 in conference play at the moment, will face Utah State in the regular-season finale on March 6th in Logan.

As for the Vandals, who won their first WAC game of the season and then promptly fell in six straight, they are trying to bounce back from a disappointing 77-66 loss to Long Beach State over the weekend. Two days prior, the team defeated Seattle University at home, which means it has been 11 days since Idaho played a meaningful WAC game.

New Mexico State won the first meeting of the season back on January 11th by a score of 75-72 at the Cowan Spectrum, which means the Aggies now own a 15-3 advantage in the all-time series.

Idaho's Marvin Jefferson recorded a double-double with 13 points and a team- high 14 rebounds, but that still did not compare to TJ Robinson who logged 22 points and 15 boards for Long Beach State in its win over the weekend. Mac Hopson accounted for 15 points and seven rebounds for the Vandals, but his 2- of-9 shooting from the floor was hard to ignore as the team shot a collective 40.7 percent from the field and only 3-of-18 beyond the arc. Hopson leads the program in scoring this season with his 14.9 ppg and is also tops with 129 assists, which coming in second on the glass with better than five per game. Jefferson (8.8 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 53 blocks) always has the potential to put up a double-double, but don't expect him to have double-figure assists any time soon, seeing as how he has just 18 dishes in 26 games.

The Aggies went with a short bench against Pacific on the road at the Spanos Center and it worked for them as they picked up the six-point win. Jahmar Young tallied 22 points and Jonathan Gibson 20, but the star of the night for New Mexico State was backup Troy Gillenwater who logged a double-double consisting of 18 points and 11 rebounds, shooting 7-of-10 from the floor in just 25 minutes of work. Gillenwater, who has played in only five games thus far, is coming on at the right time for the Aggies and is giving them a huge boost both in the paint (7.4 rpg) and behind the three-point line (.444) as he averages 15.6 ppg. But make no mistake, this offense still belongs to Young (20.9 ppg) and Gibson (18.2 ppg) who have propelled the group to 78.2 ppg. Between them they have made 229 free-throws, which is enough to give the squad almost 100 more makes than the opposition entering the week.

The Aggies have so many weapons to deal with now it is almost impossible to account for them all. A team like Idaho might be able to keep up with them for a time, but in the end NMSU is simply too strong in too many areas.