The Opening Tip
•   Longwood returns to Willett Hall for the first time in nearly three weeks to host UNC Asheville Thursday in the Big South home opener.
•   The Lancers are a perfect 6-0 on Jerome Kersey Court this season, their best home start since the 1993-94 Lancers went a perfect 13-0 at home.
•   Longwood is 4-1 in games following a loss and has lost back-to-back games just once. Â
•   Longwood entered Big South play with the program's best non-conference record since joining the league in 2012-13. At 10-6, the 2018-19 Lancers are the program's fastest team to reach double-digit victories since 2000-01.
•   The Lancers have put together back-to-back winning months to start the season, going 5-3 in November and 5-2 in December.
•   Head coach
Griff Aldrich ranks 10th in winning percentage among the 55 newly hired coaches in Division I basketball this season.
Last Time Out
•   Longwood put reigning Big South champion Radford on the ropes but succumbed to a second-half rally that saw the Highlanders overcome a 12-point deficit en route to a 71-64 win at the Dedmon Center in Radford, Va.
•   Carlik Jones led Radford's comeback with a game-high 24 points, scoring 18 in the second half.
•   Longwood led 52-40 with 10 minutes to play, but Jones scored 11 points the rest of the way, and the Highlanders took advantage of numerous trips to the line by knocking down 13-of-13 free throws.
•   Jones hit the game-tying jumper with 3:56 with to play, and Donald Hicks followed with a go-ahead jumper that gave Radford the lead for good.
•   Radford hit 29-of-38 free throws, compared to just 8-of-12 by Longwood.
•  Â
Isaiah Walton led Longwood with 14 points and 13 rebounds. The Lancers had just one double-digit scorer for the first time all season.
By The Numbers
•   Longwood is unbeaten in Willett Hall this season, posting a 6-0 record.
•   In those six home wins, Longwood has outscored the opposition by 17.5 points and outrebounded them by 5.6 boards per game.
•   Five Lancers average double-digit scoring at home this season:
Isaiah Walton (15.3 ppg.),
Shabooty Phillips (13.8),
Jaylon Wilson (13.5),
JaShaun Smith (13.2) and Sean Flood (10.8)
•   Longwood is 4-1 in games following a loss this year and has outscored those five opponents by an average of 8.0 points per game.
•   Of
Shabooty Phillips' four 20-point games this season, three have come in games following a loss. In his five games after a loss, Phillips averages 17.2 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.0 steals per game.
•   Longwood is 5-0 this season and 11-8 all-time when
Isaiah Walton scores at least 20 points. Walton has scored at least 20 points in five of his eight games this season.
•   Walton is just 19 points away from becoming the 22nd 1,000-point scorer in program history. Originally a transfer from UC Davis and Iowa Western, he has done so in just three seasons and 65 games at Longwood and would be only the seventh player in Longwood's 15-year Division I era to reach that mark.
•   Longwood's bench has contributed 24.8 points per game, or 35.2 percent of Longwood's total scoring.
•   Of Longwood's 47 double-digit scoring games this season, 14 have come from players off the bench. Guards Seán Flood,
Juan Munoz and
Isaiah Walton have all scored in double figures three times off the bench.
•   Longwood is one of five teams in Virginia with double-digit wins, joining Virginia (13-0), Virginia Tech (13-1), Liberty (12-4) and Old Dominion (11-4).
•   Of the 18 new head Division I coaches who inherited teams that won single-digit games last year, only Aldrich and Pitt's Jeff Capel (10-4) have winning percentages above .500.
Quotable
"So often I think folks think it's the big plays, it's the big events that are keys. The reality is that's not accurate. It's about mastering the little things."
— Head coach
Griff Aldrich on this past Tuesday's
Griff Aldrich Live at Effingham's coach's show
Series History
•   Longwood and UNC Asheville meet for the 14th time in series history Thursday in Farmville, Va. UNC Asheville leads the all-time series 12-1.
•   The Bulldogs are 10-1 against the Lancers in the Big South era. Longwood's lone wine over the Bulldogs came in the first round of the 2013 Big South Championship when the Lancers knocked them off 87-72 on March 5, 2013 in their first trip to the Big South postseason.
Â
#GoWood
