FARMVILLE, Va. – Home sweet home, indeed.
 
Behind 23 points from senior Shabooty Phillips, Longwood (3-1) continued to assert its home-court dominance and improved to 3-0 in Willett Hall with an 86-77 win over visiting St. Francis Brooklyn Thursday night.
 
Following last year's 10-5 home record, the Lancers are now 13-5 on Jerome Kersey Court under head coach Griff Aldrich and have won four straight dating back to last season's first-round College Basketball Invitational victory against Southern Miss. Thursday night the Terriers (1-2) became the latest victim of Longwood's high-scoring offense, unable to stop the Longwood senior backcourt tandem of Phillips and Jaylon Wilson who led the charge with a combined 37 points.
 
"This is a really good win for us," Aldrich said. "St. Francis is the type of team we're going to face in Big South play. I felt really good about it. I thought we had the game; yeah, it was back and forth, but it felt like we were up about 8-12 or so for much or so for most of the half.
 
"I actually said to [assistant coach] Austin Shaver, I don't know at what point, but I looked at him and said, 'Man, this is a good game.' St. Francis has a good team. They competed, they had smart players, they were aggressive, they didn't quit."
 
The Lancers' performance was their second straight 80-point game and came once again in the confines of Willett Hall where the Lancers have outscored their three home opponents by an average of 20.3 points per game.
 
Phillips gave the Longwood faithful the team's first 20-point game of the season and a much-anticipated breakout from a Preseason All-Big South guard who entered the game without a double-digit scoring effort in 2019-20. The senior from Houston, Texas, finally broke through that plateau Thursday behind a 7-of-12 shooting performance from the floor and a perfect 6-of-6 showing at the free throw line.
 
"Shabooty played freed up tonight," Aldrich said. "On a personal level, I was just extremely excited to see that for him. I'd say the same thing for Jaylon Wilson, who's been a special player the past two games. You probably heard me to yell at him to shoot the ball; when he's aggressive, he's a really, really good player."
 
Phillips returned to the vintage form that earned him Big South Newcomer of the Year honors last season, drilling 3-of-5 three-pointers and shooting a perfect 6-of-6 from the free throw line. All four of his assists led to three-pointers, while all six of his free throws came in the final 1:20 of the game after St. Francis cut Longwood's lead to six points.
 
Wilson, meanwhile, played a team-high 33 minutes and put together his 11th double-digit scoring effort of his past 14 games. He took a team-high 13 shots and has led Longwood in field goal attempts in three of the four games this season.
 
"We like to get 275-plus passes every game," Phillips said. "That's definitely a point of emphasis for us. Coach always talks about being the aggressor, and I feel like we were the aggressor tonight."
 
That aggression took shape early in the game for both teams during a back-and-forth opening 12 minutes that saw Longwood and St. Francis battle to a 25-25 deadlock. However, the Lancers broke it open with a 9-0 run that gave them a lead they would never relinquish. Four different Lancers scored during that stretch, including Phillips who sparked it with a pull-up jumper and Cintron who bookended it with one of his three three-pointers on the night.
 
"When you're playing against an aggressive team, you have basically a couple options: Number one, you can back door. Number two, if they're going to get up on you, you just have to go by him," Aldrich said. "It's like that big bully who's going to poke you and push you, at some point you just have to push them back."
 
Along with Phillips' and Wilson's efforts in the backcourt, point guard Juan Munoz delivered 10 points and two assists off the bench, while Cintron knocked down 3-of-3 three-pointers on the way to matching a career high with 14 points. Longwood has now produced four double-digit scorers in three of its first four games.
 
That widespread effort led Longwood to a season-high 86 points that topped Tuesday's 85-55 win over Maryland Eastern Shore that was the program's largest-ever margin of victory against a Division I team.
 
Now 2-0 into a three-game homestand this week, Longwood will have fewer than 24 hours to prepare for the finale of that set when Randolph comes to town for a 7 p.m. tipoff Friday night. Following that game, Longwood will fly out to DeKalb, Ill., on Sunday for a Monday tipoff against the Northern Illinois Huskies.
 
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