WASHINGTON -- The
Longwood women's basketball team takes on American in the nation's Capital for the second consecutive season on Wednesday, having won two of its first three games to start the year.
STORYLINES
â–ª With a win over the Eagles, the Lancers would match the best four-game start in their Division I history. Longwood dropped its opener at Seton Hall that season before beating William & Mary and Utah Valley at home and Xavier on the road to get to 3-1 overall.
 ▪ In all three games to begin the season, at least nine players put their names in the scoring column. Against Lincoln (Pa.) on Monday, all nine players to see the court scored. On Thursday at Norfolk State, 10 of the 11 players to appear in the contest tallied points. In Sunday's 102-21 homecoming victory over Hood, 12 of the 13 players on the roster scored.
â–ª Four players scored in double figures in two of the first thee games this season, doing so in the season opener against Lincoln (Pa.) and on Sunday against Hood.
â–ª The Lancers have now scored 100 points in a game in back-to-back seasons after also doing so in a 103-52 win against Regent on Jan. 27.
â–ª Through games of Nov. 11, Longwood leads the Big South in no fewer than 13 statistical categories. Some of them include scoring offense (81.7 points per game), scoring defense (54.0 points per game) and scoring margin (27.7 points), rebounding margin (10.0 rebounds per game), offensive rebounds per game (19.3), field goal percentage defense (35.5) and steals per game (15.7).
SCOUTING THE EAGLES
American enters play Wednesday at 0-2 on the season, falling to Virginia, 104-68, and Fairleigh Dickinson, 62-59, to begin the season.
Anna Rescifina leads the Eagles in scoring, averaging 16.5 points per game, while Patriot League Rookie of the Week Cecilia Kay is American's top rebounder with 9.5 boards per game. She posted a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds against the Knights on Friday.
American, under third-year head coach Tiffany Coll, was selected to finish last in the 10-team Patriot League. The Eagles return six players to a team that finished 10-20 overall and 8-10 in conference play last season, falling in the first round of the league tournament.
Two-time Patriot League All-Defensive Team honoree Ivy Bales is back for the Eagles. she averaged 8.9 points and 5.1 rebounds while grabbing 60 steals.
LAST TIME OUT
 Sophomore
Otaifo Esenabhalu posted her third career double-double with 13 points and a game-high 12 rebounds off the bench as Longwood hit triple digits for the second time in as many seasons, rolling to a 102-21 homecoming victory over Hood at the Joan Perry Brock Center on Sunday.
Twelve of the 13 Lancers found the scoring column and four finished in double figures as Longwood shot 48 percent from the field and knocked down nine 3-pointers. The Lancers limited the Blazers to single digits in all four quarters, just nine made field goals, 18.4 percent from the floor and seven free-throw attempts. Hood committed 40 turnovers, leading to 43 Longwood points.
LANCERS SEVENTH IN BIG SOUTH POLL
Longwood was picked seventh in the 2024-25 Big South preseason poll, announced at the conference media day in Charlotte, on Oct. 15. The Lancers earned 30 points in the poll to finish ahead of Presbyterian (23 points) and UNC Asheville (17).
For the fourth consecutive season and fifth time overall, High Point was chosen first with five first-place votes and 76 total points, followed by Radford with 57 points and one first-place nod and Charleston Southern with 55 points.
Winthrop in fourth, Gardner-Webb in sixth and the Blue Hose in eighth received the remaining first-place votes.
IF YOU BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM
Senior guard
Mariah Wilson transferred to Longwood after playing her first three seasons and 60 career games at Towson from 2021-24. Wilson averaged 1.5 points and 0.6 rebounds per game in 5.8 minutes for the Tigers.
When head coach
Erika Lang-Montgomery brought her team to TU Arena Nov. 12, 2022, Wilson played three minutes in an 83-72 Towson victory.
Wilson scored 11 points each in her first two games with the Lancers after only tallying double digits two times at Towson.
WELCOME BACK
Longwood assistant coach
Ivana Boyd is back in Farmville for her second stint on head coach
Erika Lang-Montgomery's staff.
Boyd, who played for Lang-Montgomery at Flagler, graduating in 2020, followed her college coach to southside Virginia as a volunteer assistant when the latter took over the program in the 2022-23 season. Boyd spent a season away as an assistant coach under Special Jennings at Jacksonville in 2023-24, helping the Dolphins to an 11-20 overall record, 5-10 in the Atlantic Sun Conference.
LUCKY 7
The Lancers will play half of their 14 non-conference games in the friendly confines of the Joan Perry Brock Center this season. That reflects a stark contrast from 2023-24 in which Longwood played seven consecutive non-league games away from Farmville from Nov. 15 at James Madison to Dec. 17 at William & Mary, traveling approximately 4,534 miles in that span.
DUNCAN CLASSIC
The Lancers are set to host their first in-season tournament since the 2010-11 season when South Carolina State, McNeese and William & Mary join Longwood in Farmville for the Shirley Duncan Classic on Dec. 6-8.
The event is named in honor of Shirley Duncan, the all-time winningest coach in Longwood women's basketball history. A 2016 Longwood athletics hall of fame inductee, and one of four associated with the women's basketball program to be part of the hall of fame, Duncan led the Lancers to a 355-263 (.575) record from 1983-05 with four NCAA Division II tournament appearances.
LET'S PLAY TWO!
Longwood freshman forward
Montgomery Bedford, a 6-foot-2 native of Baltimore, Md., and product of Baltimore City College, who was recruited to Farmville to play women's lacrosse for the Lancers, walked onto the women's basketball team this fall. Bedford is believed to be one of just four dual-sport student-athletes on Division I women's basketball rosters this season.
The others are Santa Clara forward Lauren Glover, who also plays for the Broncos' women's volleyball team; Cincinnati guard Daylee Dunn, also a member of the Bearcats' track and field team and Cal State Fullerton guard/forward Samantha Schuler, who is also on the Titans' track and field team.
Bedford is the first two-sport student-athlete to play women's basketball at Longwood since Mallory Odell did it from 2017-21, also playing for the softball team.
MS. 1,000
Longwood graduate student point guard Kiki McInytre needs 97 points to reach 1,000 for her career. The Boston native averaged 6.6 points per game last season, appearing in all 30 contests. She averaged 10.9 points per game in 61 games playing at NCAA Division II St Leo, scoring 663 points from 2020-23.
REINSON ON THE CALL
Former Longwood women's basketball head coach Bill Reinson, who coached the Lancers for parts of eight seasons from 2010-18, winning 58 games, returns to Farmville to join the "Voice of the Lancers" Sam Hovan on the call of selected home ESPN+ broadcasts from the Joan Perry Brock Center in 2024-25.
STUDENT-ATHLETES
No fewer than 10 Longwood women's basketball student-athletes were named to the 2023-24 Big South Presidential Honor Roll in June. To be included on the list, student-athletes must maintain at least a 3.0 grade-point average (on a 4.0 scale) for the academic year.
The players who achieved the feat were Lainey Bone,
Malea Brown,
Stephanie Davis,
Otaifo Esenabhalu,
Amor Harris,
Kiki McIntyre,
Nalani Simmons,
Janay Turner Frances Ulysse and
Bailey Williams.
Additionally, the Lancers earned their highest semester team grade-point average in history at 3.42 in the spring with McIntyre, Simmons and Turner collecting perfect 4.0 GPAs for the term.
STUDENT-ATHLETES, PART II
Kiki McIntyre and
Bailey Williams were named to the 2023-24 College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team®. To be eligible, student-athletes must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.5 and be starter or key contributor to their team.
THREE'S COMPANY
The Lancers went 9-for-27 (33.3 percent) from 3-point range against Hood on Sunday. It marked the the second time this season and fourth in head coach
Erika Lang-Montgomery's Longwood tenure that the Lancers made that many from distance.
The Lancers went 9-for-20 (45 percent) at Norfolk State on Nov. 7.
Longwood buried 10 from downtown in an 88-59 homecoming win over Chowan Nov. 12, 2023 and nine more in a 77-64 loss at Presbyterian on Feb. 8, 2023.
The Lancers are 8-11 under Lang-Montgomery when they make at least five 3-pointers in a game.
MOVIN' ON UP
Last season's director of basketball operations and Player Development
Rachel Balzer earned a promotion to assistant coach in late April. Balzer came to Farmville prior to the 2023-24 after graduating from George Mason in 2023.
BACK TO WHERE IT BEGAN
The Lancers will take a trip to Gainesville, Fla., on Dec. 15 to clash with the Florida Gators. The matchup represents a homecoming for head coach
Erika Lang-Montgomery, a 1995 Florida graduate and 1989 SEC All-Freshman Team selection.
Following her time as head coach at Flagler, Lang-Montgomery returned to Florida as an assistant coach from 2019-22 on the staffs of Cam Newbauer (2019-21) and Kelly Rae Finley (2021-22), respectively.
ANOTHER GATOR
Jumping into
Rachel Balzer's vacated director of basketball operations role for the 2024-25 season is two-time Florida graduate
Jazmyn Simmons.
Simmons spent the last two seasons as a graduate assistant for the Gators after being a student manager since 2019. She provided support for UF women's basketball squads that advanced to the postseason four times, including the 2022 NCAA tournament and WNIT in both 2023 and 2021.
Simmons holds a bachelor's in health science (2022) and master's in sport management (2024) from Florida.
HUDSON JOINS AS GA
Rounding out the Lancers' 2024-25 coaching staff is graduate assistant coach
Kristian Hudson.
A native of Birmingham, Ala., Hudson appeared in 114 games over five seasons at FIU (2015-18) and Nebraska (2018-20), accumulating 1,109 points and 400 assists.
Hudson graduated FIU in three years with a degree in psychology before transferring to play for the Cornhuskers. She appeared in the first seven games of 2018-19 prior to sustaining a season-ending injury.
Hudson was part of the WBCA's "So You Want to be a Coach" class, an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar, a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and an Academic All-Big Ten honoree, all in 2020.
She also was a four-time selection to the Nebraska Scholar-Athlete Honor Roll and named to the Tom Osborne Citizenship Team in both 2019 and 2020.
BENCH PRODUCTION
Longwood's non-starters averaged 20.2 points per game last season, a figure that was third in the Big South and 97th overall in the country.
Longwood outscored the opponent bench in 13 games in 2023-24 and has done so in all three games this season. The Lancers posted an overwhelming 43-7 advantage in the category in Thursday's 71-62 loss at Norfolk State with the help of a team-leading 20-point effort from graduate guard Kiki McInytre, who was the Lancers' first substitute in the game.
Longwood continued the trend with a 60-6 edge from its reserves as the Lancers drubbed Hood, 102-21, on Sunday.
Longwood is averaging 43.3 bench points per game in 2024-25, good for 14th in NCAA Division I and second in the Big South.
BAND OF THIEVES
Longwood made 16 steals in its 102-21 victory over Hood Sunday. It was the eighth time under
Erika Lang-Montgomery that the team had at least 15 steals in a game. The Lancers are 7-1 in those contests. Longwood is averaging 15.7 steals per game this year which is currently 18th in the NCAA.
Longwood led the Big South Conference and finished 21st in the country in steals per game at 10.7. Individually, Kiki McInytre led the league in the category at 2.77 per game, good for 20th in the NCAA, while she collected 83 total steals, which also led the league and was 29th in the country.
WINNING THE FIRST ONE
The Lancers' season-opening 81-70 win against Lincoln (Pa.) on Monday at the Joan Perry Brock Center marked Longwood's first victory to begin a season since defeating Campbell, 71-48. in the Lancer Classic in Willett Hall on Nov. 12, 2010.
