The Opening Tip
• Longwood is set to begin a mid-November gauntlet in which they will play four games in seven days, beginning with Tuesday's home matchup against Maryland Eastern Shore in Willett Hall.
• The Lancers will follow Tuesday's game with home matchups on consecutive days against Saint Francis (Brooklyn) on Thursday, Nov. 14, and Randolph the following night. They will cap that stretch with a road trip to Northern Illinois, whom they will face Monday, Nov. 18 at 8 p.m. EST.
• Three starters and seven letterwinners return from last year's history-making squad, including the senior quartet of
Sean Flood,
Shabooty Phillips,
JaShaun Smith and
Jaylon Wilson. Those four accounted for 54 percent of Longwood's scoring and 59 percent of the team's assists in 2018-19.
• The Lancers earned the No. 6 spot in the Big South Preseason Coaches and Media Poll, tying Longwood's highest Big South preseason ranking.
Last Time Out
• Despite a mid-game surge that saw Longwood trim a 15-point deficit to two points in the second half, George Mason withstood the Lancers' comeback effort and pulled out a 76-65 win Friday evening at EagleBank Arena.
• After falling into a 15-0 hole to start the game, Longwood bounced back and closed the first half on a 22-18 run and then matched the Patriots 43-43 in the second half. However, that opening George Mason rally proved too much to overcome as the Patriots improved to 2-0 on their home floor.
• George Mason guard Jamal Hartwell scored a game-high 19 points, and Javon Greene added 18. The Patriots shot .547 from the field.
• Three Lancers scored in double figures, led by
DeShaun Wade's 13 points off the bench.
Christian Wilson added 11 points, and
Jaylon Wilson scored 10.
Shabooty Phillips and
Juan Munoz combined for 10 of Longwood's 13 assists.
By The Numbers
• Longwood has the Big South's leaders in both rebounds and assists per game. Freshman forward
Leslie Nkereuwem leads the conference with 9.0 boards per game, while redshirt sophomore point guard
Juan Munoz sits atop the Big South leaderboard with 5.5 assists per game.
• Nkereuwem, a freshman from Lawrenceville, Va., and the Georgia Region 6-AAAAAAA Player of the Year in 2018-19, is nearly perfect from the field in his first two collegiate games. He is shooting .857 (6-of-7) from the floor while grabbing a team-high eight offensive rebounds and averaging 25.0 minutes per game.
• Longwood's bench has made major contributions in the first two games of the season, averaging 38.0 points, 23.0 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game. Non-starters have accounted for 55.1 percent of Longwood's points, 63.9 percent of the team's rebounds and 51.7 percent of the assists.
• Both of Longwood's top two scorers have come off the bench with sophomore newcomers
DeShaun Wade and
Christian Wilson atop Longwood's list with 11.5 points per game.
• Longwood's offense put together one of the most efficient shooting performances of the program's Division I era in the season opener, shooting .617 (29-of-47) from the field against Marymount. That was only the 10th time in the past 14 years the Lancers have shot better than 60.0 percent.
• Longwood's team is the tallest in school history with an average height of 6-foot-4. Nine of the team's 14 players are 6-5 or taller, including the 6-10
Ilija Stefanovic and 6-11
Abraham Deng.
•
Jaylon Wilson has scored in double figures in 10 of his past 13 games dating back to last season. He is averaging 14.4 points per game in that span.
•
Shabooty Phillips and
JaShaun Smith have started 36 consecutive games together.
Quotable
"We told the guys where we will really lose this game is if we don't learn from what this revealed to us. Again, am I happy we lost the game? No, but they're teaching tools. If we can learn from these mistakes, then it's well worth it."
— Head coach
Griff Aldrich after Friday's road loss at George Mason
Series History
• Longwood and Maryland Eastern Shore meet for the second straight season to renew a series that Longwood leads 4-1.
• The Lancers have won three straight over the Hawks, including last year's 66-63 barnburner in Princess Anne, Md. Longwood outlasted Eastern Shore in that win, surviving an end-game rally in the game's final two minutes to pull out a victory that made the Lancers 3-0 for the first time in the program's Division I era.
• Last year's three-point game was the closest in the history of the five-game series.
• Eastern Shore's lone win came on Jan. 28, 1981, 82-75 in the second meeting between the team.
#GoWood
