FARMVILLE, Va. – Following a close loss to USC
Upstate Wednesday night and a series of prolonged Big South struggles, Longwood
coach Griff Aldrich saw a glimmer of light. The Lancers played with good effort
and competed at the level Aldrich expected from his side after it got off to a
sizzling non-league start.
Saturday, despite the rainy and dreary conditions outside
the Joan Perry Brock Center, that glimmer turned into a bright spotlight.
Longwood had two players register career-high point totals
and tied its season-high for made threes in a game, silencing a late Winthrop
run and taking an 84-74 decision before an announced crowd of 2,873.
“That was a great win for us,” Aldrich said. “Obviously, the
conference slate has been a real challenge. We’ve had a lot of games where they’ve
been close and we haven’t finished them. Thankfully, we had a big enough margin
to withstand their end-game run.”
“I’ve been so proud of our guys. Their approach has really
been phenomenal. It’s easy to be a champion, have a great attitude, and compete
when everything’s going your way. It’s hard to do that when things aren’t going
your way. That’s the true test of a champion and the true test of character. I think our guys have done that, and because
they’ve done that, they’ve put themselves in a spot to get better and be
playing better.”
Longwood (15-11, 3-8 Big South) skidded out of the gates a
bit. Winthrop (15-11, 6-5) raced out to an early 8-2 lead behind threes from
Kasen Harrison and Sin’Cere McMahon. The Lancers countered with an 8-2 burst of
their own, leveling the contest at the 10:45 mark. The visiting Eagles again
stretched their lead as far as four, before the Lancers tore off a 7-0 burst
from which the Eagles were never able to recover. Longwood closed the half on a
28-10 overall run to take a 42-28 margin to the interval.
Massie electrified the crowd while providing the bucket that
set up that score, heaving a 65-foot try that banked in as the horn sounded.
“A lot went into that (result),” Winthrop coach Mark Prosser
said. “All those things happened because they played harder than (we did). They were more urgent than we were. It wasn’t
anything more dramatic than that. When that happens, you can’t win at the
Division 1 level. You certainly can’t win at the Division 1 level on the road.”
“We have goals. We have things that we lay out. We have
things that we harp on. We didn’t meet a lot of our goals today. Give them a
lot of credit. That’s a good team. When they’re shooting the ball well, it’s
really difficult. Today, they had a lot of comfort. When you have that comfort
level, shots find their way to go in.”
Much as they were the story of the game, Longwood forwards Michael
Christmas and John-John Massie were the stories of the half. The duo combined
to tally 30 of Longwood’s 42 in the period, hitting 10-of-13 tries from the
deck and 5-of-5 from the line. Lancer point
guard Walyn Napper helped feed the pair, helping on five Longwood buckets in
the first 20.
“I thought Walyn was phenomenal, particularly in the first
half,” Aldrich said. “He was a true point guard. The ball was flying all over
the place and he was just picking apart their ball-screen defense. It helped
that we made shots. I thought that his ball-screen reads were outstanding. That
really gave us a lot of life, too.”
Napper would collect his fourth foul before the 14-minute
mark, leading the Lancers to employ D.A. Houston, their other steady veteran
point guard. The Lancers responded, keeping a 10-plus point lead for much of
the second half.
“It’s hard, because Walyn is, in many ways, our engine,”
Aldrich said. “You saw in the first half how dynamic he is. I thought D.A. did
an incredible job. Mateo Esmeraldo – a walk-on – gave us minutes in both the
first and second halves. I really thought the guys continued to make plays and
play with confidence. When Walyn was out – he’s normally playing 32 to 36
minutes and tonight he played 20 tonight. It was a huge team win.”
The comfortable Lancer cushion persisted until a late
Winthrop surge. The Eagles, guided by Micheal Anumba’s veteran presence, made a
charge from a 12-point deficit down to five in the span of 50 seconds, casting
an uneasy feeling over the partisan Lancer crowd. Longwood allowed the crowd to
exhale a bit on the ensuing possession, as Christmas fired home a dunk to
extend the margin back to 80-73 and put away the Eagles.
“I’m really proud of the group that was out there at the
end,” Prosser said. “That’s not enough. You can’t play hard for two (four-minute
segments). It went from 19 to five quickly. I think we’re a team that has some
potent offensive players. Eventually, I think we’ll score. Their shooting percentages
were extraordinarily high. That makes it difficult to win, especially on the
road.”
Massie and Christmas both lodged career-highs. Massie hit
8-of-9 shots, 3-of-3 from distance, and 12-of-13 from the line to finish with
31. Christmas connected on 8-of-15, including 5-of-7 from deep. The grad
student finished with his career-best of 26. The Lancers hit 27-of-53 tries
(50.9 percent) and 10-of-21 three-point tries (47.6 percent). Longwood hit 20-of-28
tries (71.4 percent) from the charity stripe.
“We don’t win the game if they don’t play the way they did,” Aldrich said of Massie and Christmas.
Harrison guided the Eagles with 20, booking 9-of-14 shots
and 1-of-3 from both the line and distance. Kelton Talford added 18, including
a 12-of-16 performance in which he drew nine Lancer fouls. K.J. Doucet tallied
15 and seven rebounds while Anumba scored 11 on 3-of-5 shooting and 4-of-6 from
the line. The Eagles shot 47.7 percent (21-for-44) after heating up to 58.3
percent (14-for-24) in the second half. Winthrop attempted a season-high 42 free
throws and hit 27, eclipsing the prior season-high attempts number of 39 from
their first game against Longwood.
Winthrop returns to action Thursday night at the Dedmon Center in Radford, Va., against Radford. Game time between the Eagles and Highlanders is set for 8:00 (Eastern), with television coverage over ESPNU. Longwood will be off for one week before heading to Clinton, S.C., to battle Presbyterian. Tip time in the Templeton Center will be 2:00 Saturday, Feb. 17, with streaming coverage over ESPN+.
LONGWOOD 84,
WINTHROP 74
WINTHROP (15-11,
6-5 BIG SOUTH)
Talford 3-5
12-16 18, Doucet 3-7 8-11 15, Claxton 0-1 0-1 0, Johnson 3-7 0-2 8, Harrison 9-14
1-3 20, McMahon 0-3 2-3 2, Anumba 3-5 4-6 11, Timmerman 0-1 0-0 0, Diallo 0-1
0-0 0. Totals 21-44 27-42 74
LONGWOOD (15-11,
3-8)
Christmas 8-15
4-4 25, Tucker 2-7 2-2 6, Granlund 2-5 0-0 4, Napper 2-4 1-4 5, Houston 0-5 0-0
0, Massie 8-9 12-13 31, Richards 2-4 0-1 6, Zapala 1-1 0-0 2, Sunderland 0-1
0-0 0, Nziemi 2-2 1-4 5, Esmeraldo 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 27-53 20-28 84.
Halftime: Longwood 42-28. 3-Point goals: Longwood 10-21 (Christmas 5-7, Granlund 0-2,
Napper 0-1, Houston 0-4, Massie 3-3, Richards 2-4), Winthrop 5-19 (Doucet 1-5,
Claxton 0-1, Johnson 2-4, Harrison 1-3, McMahon 0-3, Anumba 1-2, Timmerman 0-1).
Fouled out: Claxton (WU), Granlund (LU).
Rebounds: Longwood 33 (Christmas 9), Winthrop 27 (Doucet
7). Assists: Longwood 14 (Napper 6), Winthrop 9 (Harrison 4). Total fouls: Longwood 32, Winthrop 25. Technicals: NA.
Points off
turnovers: Longwood 20, Winthrop 18. Points in the paint: Winthrop 32, Longwood 28. Second-chance points: Longwood 11, Winthrop 3. Fast-break points: Winthrop 6, Longwood 6. Bench points:
Longwood 44, Winthrop 13.
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