LUBBOCK, Texas -- Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance walked into a convenience store in Lake Placid, N.Y., last summer, 1,658 miles from his campus. The clerk looked up, noticed the Tech logo on his T-shirt and said: "Bobby Knight, Bobby Knight."

"I don't know that you can put a price on a lot of national exposure he's brought to Texas Tech and Lubbock," Hance said. "If coach Knight were walking through LaGuardia Airport with Mack Brown and Bob Stoops, the people in the airport would say, 'Who are those two people with Bob Knight?'"

Knight gets his first shot at his 880th victory tonight, and a win at home against UNLV will make him the winningest Division I men's coach in history.

For his part, the 66-year-old Knight has played down the march to overtaking former North Carolina coach Dean Smith's mark of 879 victories. He said the record won't "have any impact whatsoever" on the basketball program or the school.

"Anything that can happen good through athletics does have some reflection on the university, certainly," Knight said. "But I don't think it's a monumental thing. I think Texas Tech would be a great institution without a basketball team."