ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) – Both Falcon teams came up short of the upset in their final home games of the season. <\/p>\n
First up was the women\u2019s matchup between UTPB and the No. 23 Lubbock Christian Lady Chaps. LCU outlasted the Falcons to secure the 60-56 victory. <\/p>\n
UTPB put up quite the fight though, especially early on. Senior Kenadi Rising opened the game with 10 straight points for the Falcons. <\/p>\n
The Lady Chaps recovered in the second quarter, outscoring UTPB by 11 to take a 31-18 lead into halftime. <\/p>\n
The Falcons soared back into the picture in the third quarter, with Rising and Madison Walters putting up bucket-after-bucket. <\/p>\n
The fourth quarter came down to the wire, but a late layup from Lubbock Christian\u2019s Martie McCoy sealed the deal. <\/p>\n
Despite the loss, Kenadi Rising had a great showing in her final Falcon Dome game. She led the scoring effort with 20 points. <\/p>\n
With the loss, UTPB dropped to 15-11 overall and 10-8 in Lone Star Conference play. The Falcons also slid down the conference standings to eighth place. <\/p>\n
With just two games left in the regular season, each matchup is crucial for UTPB\u2019s Lone Star Conference Tournament hopes. <\/p>\n
The programs held their Senior Day festivities in-between the two contests. <\/p>\n
The women\u2019s team honored Rising as its lone senior player, but also recognized graduate assistants Tamia Flores and Dagne Apsite for their contributions to the program. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the men\u2019s team celebrated five of its senior players: TJ McKenzie, Bryceson Burns, Sharrod Taylor, Kyle McElroy and Tash Lunday. <\/p>\n
No. 10 Lubbock Christian took the court soon after for the contest against UTPB. While the Falcons held their own until the end, the Chaparrals did leave town with an 80-77 victory. <\/p>\n
UTPB kept pace with LCU for the entire game, as the senior leaders did their best to outscore the Chaps.<\/p>\n
TJ McKenzie led the Falcon offense with 29 points. Taylor and Lunday were close behind with 15 and 13 respectively. <\/p>\n
However, they couldn\u2019t match the intensity LCU brought to that side of the ball. The Chaparrals had four different players reach double-digit scoring in the game. <\/p>\n
The Falcons drop to 10-16 with the loss. They are also out of the Lone Star Tournament race with a 6-10 conference record. <\/p>\n
Both teams head west for the penultimate game of the regular season. The UTPB programs will face Eastern New Mexico on Feb. 26. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KOSA. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) – Both Falcon teams came up short of the upset in their final home games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[70728,168,70726,70727,36012,170,169,70724,70723,70725],"class_list":["post-175332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lone-star-conference-basketball","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-christian-chaparrals","tag-lubbock-christian-lady-chaps","tag-lubbock-christian-university","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-university-of-texas-permian-basin","tag-utpb","tag-utpb-falcons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}