LUBBOCK, Texas (February 5, 2015) – Isaac Cardona and Beau Durham were catalysts in Lubbock Christian's 80-65 win over Oklahoma Christian on Thursday evening at the Rip Griffin Center, allowing the Chaps a continued piece of first place in the Heartland Conference, with Cardona posting a career-high 23 points and Durham notching his first career double-double of 15 points and 10 rebounds.

The Chaps (12-8, 9-4 Heartland), who are now in a three-way tie atop league standings along with St. Mary's and Arkansas-Fort Smith, avenged a 20-point loss to the Eagles (3-16, 1-12 Heartland) that occurred on January 20 by sinking over half of their shot attempts (31-of-61), outrebounding OC and forcing 20 Eagle turnovers.

Big men Cardona and Durham combined to hit four of LCU's eight three-pointers in the contest and did a reasonable job battling against the much taller Eagle front court. The duo was also instrumental in LCU's 42-to-16 scoring advantage in the paint.

Trailing 18-13 midway through the first half, Durham and Ridrell Holman outscored the entire Eagle offense, 13-2, to push the Chaps ahead 26-20 with just under six minutes to play. A pair of Durham threes sandwiched an and-one play by Holman before each player scored another bucket in the paint for the six-point advantage.

LCU held OC without a field goal from the 7:14 mark until 2:06 remaining in the first half when Eric Randall connected on a pair of jumpers on back-to-back possessions to cut the Chap lead to seven with under a minute to go. Durham came through with another field goal, and Holman netted a three-pointer as time expired to put LCU up 36-24 heading into the break.

While Durham did the bulk of his damage within the first twenty minutes, Cardona came alive at the start of the second stanza, producing a bucket 13 seconds in and then scoring on a reverse layup two possessions later. Another bucket in the paint and a pair a free throws at the 16:58 mark by Cardona extended LCU's lead to 46-29.

A jumper by Matthew Alford upped the advantage to 20 with 14:33 to go, while a Holman shot from deep gave the Chaps their largest lead of the night at 74-51 with five minutes remaining. Two late three-pointers by the Eagles cut the deficit to 15 for the final count.

Holman totaled 15 points for his third straight double-figure scoring game, and Marcos Schuster contributed 11 points off of the bench.

For the Eagles, Randall registered 19 points and John Moon had 14.

The Chaps play host to Newman Saturday at 3 p.m.