COLLEGE BASKETBALL NOTEBOOK: UTPB returns home to resume conference play

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Dec. 3—The UTPB men’s basketball team will return to Lone Star Conference action this week when the Falcons face Texas A&M International and Texas A&M-Kingsville at home.

The Falcons (4-1 overall, 1-0 in Lone Star Conference) are coming off a short Thanksgiving break from last week after UTPB defeated Southeastern Oklahoma State in a nonconference road game in Durant, Okla.

UTPB will face Texas A&M International (5-4, 1-0) at 7:30 p.m. Thursday before facing Texas A&M-Kingsville (4-3, 0-1) at 3 p.m. Saturday with both games at the Falcon Dome.

The Falcons enter this week on a three-game winning streak with their last loss coming against NCAA Division I UTEP back on Nov. 12 in an exhibition game in El Paso.

But it hasn’t been an easy winning streak for UTPB as all three games have been decided by three points or less.

Free throws ended up making the difference in last week’s victory against Southeastern Oklahoma State as UTPB’s Dario Domingos hit two from the charity stripe with 11 seconds remaining to help the Falcons escape.

“We work a lot on free throws,” Tolin said at Monday’s press conference at the D. Kirk Edwards Human Performance Center. “We don’t take breaks on those during practice. We do a lot of free throw shooting. If you look at the last three or four years in the Lone Star Conference we’ve been near the top in free throw shooting. We shot 78-90 percent from the line last year. Making 27 of 34 free throws on the road can make a difference in the game.”

>> WEIRD SCHEDULING: In the past, UTPB began Lone Star Conference play in December.

This year, they started conference play a little bit earlier, beginning with a 65-62 win against Angelo State back on Nov. 23.

It will have been 12 days since UTPB’s last conference game by the time the Falcons take the court against the Dustdevils.

“That wasn’t ideal and we put a lot of emphasis on beating Angelo State,” Tolin said of the scheduling. “It needed to happen. I had been here long enough to know that we don’t like Angelo…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-basketball-notebook-utpb-returns-010100114.html

Author : Odessa American, Texas

Publish date : 2024-12-04 01:01:00

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