NEWARK, Del. -- The Longwood women's basketball team travels to face Colonial Athletic Conference foe Delaware to meet the Blue Hens for the second consecutive season on Thursday. Tip off of at the Bob Carpenter is set for 7 p.m.
STORYLINES
▪ Longwood plays its second of three games this week to begin the season Thursday at Delaware. Tip time is 7 p.m., at the Bob Carpenter Center as the Lancers look to even the series at one game apiece. UD took the first all-time meeting between the two to open the 2022-23 season, 82-62, on Nov. 7, 2022 at Willett Hall in Farmville.
▪ Thursday's contest is the second in a stretch where Longwood will play nine of its first 10 games away from home. LU is set to travel approximately 4,534 miles in that span, but will open the brand-new Joan Perry Brock Center Sunday versus Division II Chowan on Sunday at noon before continuing the road odyssey.
▪ The Lancers put three players in double figures in the loss at American led by
Adriana Shipp-Davis with 15 points,
Janay Turner with 13 and
Anne-Hamilton LeRoy with 11. LeRoy's 64th career double-digit scoring effort helped her into 15th place in Longwood women's basketball all-time scoring list with 1,223 points.
▪ Despite dropping the season opener at American, 81-68, on Monday, the Lancers led, 16-15, after the first quarter when junior
Malea Brown hit a driving layup as time wound down. Brown scored six points, grabbed five rebounds and handed out two assists in her Longwood debut.
SCOUTING THE BLUE HENS
Delaware, under second-year head coach Sarah Jenkins, is coming off a 16-14 season where the Blue Hens reached the second round of the CAA tournament. The Blue Hens were picked to finish fourth in the league coaches poll with 123 points behind Towson, Stony Brook and Northeastern this season.
Fifth-year center Klarke Sconiers and senior forward Chloe Wilson were preseason All-CAA honorable mention selections. Sconiers averaged 12.6 points and 4.4 rebounds per game while shooting .539 percent from the field. Wilson, a transfer from Fairleigh Dickinson, was an an All-NEC first team selection last year and an all-rookie team pick in 2020-22 She's scored 1.007 points in two seasons.
BRIGHT SPOTS IN THE OPENER
There were several bright spots in the loss to American on Monday. The Lancers led in the early going for 8:03 in the first quarter. LU was also strong inside, winning the points in the paint category, 36-28, while also converting 10 fastbreak points to just four for the Eagles.
Junior Laney Bone, a transfer from Cleveland (Tenn.) State Community College, led the Lancers with seven rebounds, including six on the defensive glass, in her first Division I action. Bone was a member of Buffalo's MAC championship team in 2022 but did not see game action for the Bulls.
BACK FOR MORE
Among the Lancers' four returning starters are 2023 All-South second-team selections Adriana Shipp-Davis and Anne-Hamilton LeRoy. Shipp-Davis is a preseason All-Big South first teamer this year after ranking fourth in the Big South in scoring at 13.9 points per game, while LeRoy earned a spot on the preseason second team following a season that saw her seventh in scoring (13.4).
FIRST MINUTES
Of the 12 Lancers who saw the floor Monday against American, half of them logged their first NCAA Division I minutes. Those six were freshmen forwards Otaifo Esenabhalu and Frances Ulysse, junior forward Laney Bone, junior guards Malea Brown and Kiki McIntyre and freshman guard Nalani Simmons.
TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER
Fifth-year guard Anne-Hamilton LeRoy is among the NCAA's actively career leaders in several statistical categories. Those are: games played (120, 26th), points (1,223, 67th in Division I and 78th in all NCAA divisions), free throws made (340, 17th in Division I and 22nd in all divisions) and free throws attempted (443, 21st in Division I and 26th in all divisions.
POUTINE, PLEASE
Hailing from Montréal, Québec, freshman forward Frances Ulysse is the first player from north of the border to suit up for Longwood in its Division I history, which began in 2004-05. Ulysse averaged 15.2 points and 9.2 rebounds in 2022-23 at Vanier College, earning regional all-star honors.
Since the 2010-11 season, only eight other foreign-born student-athletes have played for the Lancers. They are: Mina Jovanovic, of Smederevska Palanka, Serbia, from 2010-12, Mieke Elkington, of Hamilton, New Zealand, from 2011-13, Jovana Vukovic, of Bar, Montenegro, in 2016-17, Rosemary Ilang, of Abuja, Nigeria, from 2017-19, Kristina Antonenko, of Moscow, Russia, from 2017-19, Milou Vennema, of Groningen, Netherlands, from 2018-23, Andrijana Reljic, of Sarajevo, Bosnia, from 2019-21 and Geassy Germano, of São Paulo, Brazil, from 2021-23.
RECORD BOOK TALK
Through the first game of 2023-24, fifth-year guard Anne-Hamilton LeRoy sits second overall in Longwood women's basketball history in career free throws made (340), sixth in free-throw percentage (.767) and 15th in career points (1,223). LeRoy is just four makes from the line away surpassing Marita Meldere's school record in the category of 343, set in 2005.
Additionally, senior guard Janay Turner turned in the seventh best single-season mark for free-throw percentage in 2022-23, hitting on .836 (92-of-110) of her freebies in her first season in Farmville after transferring from Norfolk State. Turner's mark ranked 69th in the NCAA a season ago.
NEXT TO 1,000?
Redshirt-senior guard Adriana Shipp-Davis comes into play this season needing 247 points to reach the 1,000-point milestone for her career. The 2023 Preseason All-Big South First Team honoree posted 21 double-figure scoring games, including seven with 20-plus points, last season. She has scored in double digits 36 times in her career, leading the Lancers to an 18-18 record in those games. When Shipp-Davis goes for 20 or more, which she's done eight times, Longwood has played to a 4-4 record.
Shipp-Davis turned in a career high of 26 points in a 75-65 victory over UNC Asheville on Jan. 11, 2023 while shooting 9-for-14 from the field that day.
TURNER PROVIDES SCORING
Aside from Anne-Hamilton LeRoy and Adriana Shipp-Davis, a third starter from the 2022-23 season who averaged double figures returns to the fold in Janay Turner. A 5-foot-8 senior guard from Chicago, Turner registered 10.9 points per game, scoring double digits in 16 of 29 contests. Turner matched her career high of 20 points, originally set at Norfolk State in the 2021-22 season, three times for the Lancers.
She poured in 20 to tie for game-high scoring honors with Shipp-Davis in a 70-68 win over Presbyterian on Jan. 21 and also had 20 points in a 59-50 road win at UNC Asheville on Feb. 25 to help the Lancers clinch a first-round bye in the Big South tournament.
WILLIAMS DEPENDABLE AT POINT
Senior Bailey Williams is also back for her second season for the Lancers after becoming a steady and reliable point guard in 2022-23. Williams averaged 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game while starting in all 30 contests. She played 30.8 minutes per game, a figure that was good for 13th overall in the Big South last season.
A strong defender as well, Williams finished 25th in the conference, swiping 1.1 steals per game. She twice collected a career high of four steals in a game last year – in an 80-70 home victory over Charleston Southern on Jan. 4 and a 97-64 win against USC Upstate on Feb. 15, also at Willett Hall.
