FARMVILLE, Va. – On a night when he changed pitchers five times and successfully called eight stolen bases, Longwood head coach Ryan Mau's best coaching decision may have come when nobody was on the field.
 
Mau, whose Lancers (14-17, 4-8 Big South) rode 7.1 innings of two-run baseball from the bullpen en route to a 7-4 win over William & Mary, battled a two-hour weather delay in the fourth inning just as much as anything the visiting Tribe could offer Wednesday at Buddy Bolding Stadium.
 
"You go in the clubhouse and you shut the TV off. That's the first thing we did," said Mau, detailing his strategy to fight the two-hour mid-game lull. "You try to keep your players focused. You keep telling them to stay locked in, that we're gonna get this thing in."
 
It took more than two hours with a steady rain and multiple lightning strikes threatening to end the game after three innings of play, but when the sky finally cleared and the tarp peeled back, Longwood was locked in. The Lancers swiped eight bases, gave up just four hits after the second inning and played error-free baseball to defeat William & Mary (14-15) on a night in which more than five hours separated first pitch from last pitch.
 
"During the delay we just cut off the TV, and everyone was just in there relaxing," said reliever Ryan Jones, who was part of a bullpen effort that fired 7.1 innings of two-run ball. "As it got closer and we knew we were going back out there, we turned it up a little and got more serious.  We started focusing and talking about the game more, and we carried that back out there with us."
 
The 6-1, 205-pound Jones was the second man out of the bullpen when the game resumed and carried Longwood into the seventh by shutting out William & Mary (14-15) over his 2.1 frames. He gave up just one hit, struck out the side in the sixth and retired seven of the 11 batters he faced as the Lancer bats increased their lead to 6-2 before his exit.
 
Jones was one of five Longwood relievers who took over when starter Michael Catlin was lifted after yielding two runs in 1.2 innings of work. Allen Ellis (2-1) followed from there, scattering one hit and a walk over 2.0 innings before a lightning strike in the area forced a mandatory 30-minute delay. Continued lightning forced that delay to drag on for two hours and six minutes before play resumed, but Jones and his bullpen mates Luke Simpson and Devin Gould came out after the break and scattered two runs on three hits the rest of the way.
 
"Those guys did their job," Mau said. "Allen Ellis came in and did a great job of settling us down. After the rain delay, Ryan Jones came in and put up some zeroes for us. Luke Simpson really stepped up, coming in with first and second and no outs to pitch us out of a jam there with no damage. Devin Gould got those last three outs, and those are the toughest to get. He did a superb job."
 
Gould picked up the save with a three-strikeout ninth inning, punching out William & Mary leadoff man Cullen Large with the bases loaded for the final out and his second save of the year. In total, Longwood's bullpen stranded 15 William & Mary runners, including eight in scoring position.
 
"You want the starter to go far and go deep into games, but at the same times as relievers, you like being to get as many innings as you can," Jones said. "It was fun, we ended up with a win, a lot of people threw and a lot of people threw well."
 
Longwood's offensive production came from hitters one through nine, with the top half of the lineup contributing eight hits and four RBI and the bottom half adding five steals, four runs and two RBI. The Lancers swiped eight bases, the second most in the program's Division I era trailing only the nine that the Lancers took against Coppin State on March 5, 2011.
 
Brandon Harvell had a career-high four of those swipes, while Colton Konvicka took three and C.J. Roth grabbed another. Longwood stole four bases in a three-run, go-ahead third inning and then took four more after the delay.
 
"I thought we ran into some outs early," said Mau, whose Lancers are stealing at a 76.7 percent (56-of-73) success rate this season. "We made some baserunning mistakes early before the rain delay. But we came out and really attacked on the base paths. With Brandon getting four and Colton getting three, it was just about applying pressure and taking advantage of an extra base when we could get it. It really set us up to chip away at some more runs there."
 
And while the balanced effort from the bullpen and the lineup improved Longwood to 5-1 in its last six non-conference games, Mau was quick to give a nod to another group that made Wednesday's victory possible.
 
"I wanted to credit the athletic department staff that chipped in tonight, helping tarp the field so we could get it in tonight," Mau said. "I tip my hat to them."

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