This happens routinely on weekdays too. Number of points is not indicative of something appearing on the frontpage. I don't know what is though, which makes me suspicious of hidden agendas.
Views are calculated into front-paging?
I thought I read somewhere that successful front-pagers have an increased weight to their posts being frontpaged.
And "rate of upvotes" matters a lot. So maybe these 3 upvotes were given within a second of each other.. ?