Longwood keeps fighting for its happy ending

 

Longwood coach Griff Aldrich celebrates after the Lancers win the 2022 Big South title. (Photo:  Longwood Athletics)

Follow @sportsmatters

BOILING SPRINGS, N.C. – It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

After Longwood trailed by 22 at the half, the Lancers clawed – if ever so slowly – back into the game. First, they trailed by 17. It then became 14. The visitors trailed by 13 with 7:47 to play, only to unfurl a glacial 13-0 burst in a nearly six-minute span to level the game at 69. Gardner-Webb’s Lucas Stieber was assessed a charging foul, giving Longwood the ball with a chance to take the lead for the first time all night.

Unfortunately for the Lancers, Walyn Napper’s contested layup with 21 seconds to play fell away, giving Gardner-Webb the ball with a chance to win it. After a slow Runnin’ Bulldogs possession, DQ Nicholas hoisted a three from the top of the circle with 1.2 seconds remaining. The shot did not fall, but Nicholas did – fouled, as judged by official Ben Stirt, on the attempt. Nicholas calmly sank all three free throw attempts, and D.A. Houston’s attempt to tie the game for Longwood did not have enough time to count.

The last :45... DRAMA pic.twitter.com/a1BkgHBqBa

— Brian (@sportsmatters) March 1, 2024

After giving up 12 threes in the first half and just two in the second, the Lancers dominated the closing period. The Runnin’ Bulldogs shot 28.6 percent in the stanza, hitting just six total shots. The home side hit its final field goal off the hand of Quest Aldridge with 9:26 remaining. Gardner-Webb missed its final eight shots, going 7:46 without scoring a point at all. That final second, though, proved both exhilarating and heartbreaking, depending on your allegiance.

“We played well and we played hard,” Gardner-Webb coach Tim Craft said after the game. “Credit to Longwood. When you are down by that much at the half, you play desperate and you play loose. You have nothing to lose. They made things hard for us offensively. I don’t think we had we had a field goal for the last 10 minutes (9:26), but we found a way to win.”

Longwood coach Griff Aldrich was a picture of exhaustion after the game. He was exhausted from the constant push-and-pull of the prior 40 minutes of game action. He was exhausted from the final minute and a half, where his team had so many chances to take a lead that had eluded it the entire night.

Finally, he was clearly exhausted from his team’s first-half effort.

“It’s a mix of emotions,” Aldrich said. “On one hand, I couldn’t have been more disgusted in the first half. Then, in the second half, you couldn’t be more proud. What I told them is that this game reveals your character. At halftime, we said, ‘Your character is being revealed. Are you going to compete, or are you going to quit?’ To their credit, they came back and competed at a very high level and really performed very well.”

“Obviously, we can’t ignore the first half, either, and our getting down by 22. My true hope is that something resonates with them about, ‘Hey, why did the second half happen? Why didn’t it happen in the first half?’ That second half, that’s who we want to be. We’ve been fighting to be that second-half team.”

At the risk of repeating myself, it wasn’t supposed to end this way.

This time, we’re talking about the Lancers’ season. Longwood is 12-3 at home. It was 12-3 in non-conference play. The team plays in a picturesque new facility in Farmville, literally steps from Willett Hall, its home since 1980. The Joan Perry Brock Center has served the Lancers well this season, with one final game remaining there this season. Regular season champion High Point visits southside Virginia, with almost everything imaginable on the line. Longwood needs to beat the Panthers – and even still, it does not control its own destiny in avoiding the dreaded 8-9 play-in game as a unit with 17 or 18 victories.

This season makes Griff sound like equal parts of what he is:  an accomplished coach and a doting – yet tough – dad. He showed both in equal measure Thursday night.

“This has been our season,” Aldrich said after the game, which he felt was a microcosm of the campaign. “(We’ve been) a team that struggles to compete, struggles to come out with an execution mindset, is relatively sloppy in the first half, and then, a team that also has the ability to come out and really impose its will.”

“I’m the head coach. It’s my job to press the right buttons to get them to understand and do things the right way, and I haven’t been able to do that. That’s on me.”

The coach in Aldrich slipped away for a bit, replaced by the father.

“I think the point here is that athletics and the game of basketball gives you life lessons. Your character gets exposed positively and negatively every time you step on the court. Mine does as a coach. We all have to evaluate why the first half and why the second half (happened), because that’s how you’re going to live your life.”

“It’s not just the game of basketball. It’s probably how you operate academically. It’s probably going to be how you operate with your job. It’s probably how you’re going to operate when times get tough. You can either fight to execute and do the next right thing, or you can not show up, and just kind of go through the motions. Going through the motions – as we all know as adults – doesn’t work.”

Aldrich is not your typical college basketball coach. This has been chronicled many times over. He is, however, the epitome of the notion that you don’t coach kids for four years, but for forty. His leadership of this group may prove to be an even more important task than holding up a league title in Charlotte in 2022.

To be fair, he seems unwilling to close the book on this season, still holding out hope that maybe it will have the ending everyone in the program expected.

“The biggest thing for Longwood basketball is fighting for our culture,” Aldrich said. “We’ve got one more game left and we’ve got the tournament. I know one thing – I’m sure there are not many teams that want to play us in the tournament if we can connect the dots. That’s what we have to do.”

The Lancers close out the regular season Saturday at home at 4:30 (Eastern) against High Point. Streaming coverage will be available via ESPN+ or WVHL radio.