FARMVILLE, Va. – Four days, three wins, and Longwood men's basketball is once again off to one of the best starts of the Division I era.
 
Now 4-1 for the second straight season under head coach Griff Aldrich, the red-hot Lancers capped a gauntlet of a homestand with their third straight win in Willett Hall Friday night, 78-53 over Division-III Randolph. The win improved the Lancers to 4-0 on their home court and made them only the ninth team in program history to win four of their first five games, joining last year's squad on that list.
 
In their most compact stretch of the regular season, Longwood went 3-0 in a 96-hour span and showcased the program's newfound depth that has been bolstered by an eight-man signing class. Several of those newcomers stepped up Friday night against the Wildcats (1-2), including freshman forward Leslie Nkereuwem who broke out for 13 points to match fellow newcomer Christian Wilson for the team scoring lead.
 
Nkereuwem finished 4-of-5 from the field with a pair of dunks and added five rebounds, three of which were on the offensive glass. Meanwhile, Wilson grabbed seven rebounds of his own and led Longwood in scoring for the third time in his first five games as a Lancer.
 
Their contributions gave the Lancers another win just one day after dispatching St. Francis Brooklyn 86-77 Thursday night in Willett Hall and three days after a runaway 85-55 win over Maryland Eastern Shore Tuesday.
 
"It's tough, but it's asked of us and it's expected of us," said senior guard Sean Flood of Longwood's grueling stretch this week. "It's like coming to work: You have to show up and do your job every day. We have to be professional about it, so that's how we take it."
 
Flood showed up to work and scored seven points off the bench to help the Lancers survive an uncharacteristic off-shooting night from three-point range. Entering the game as the Big South leader in both field goal percentage and three-point field goal percentage, Longwood saw a season-low 5-of-19 treys fall against Randolph but made up the difference in the paint where they outscored Randolph 38-18 and produced 23 second-chance points.
 
The interior effort salvaged what concluded as Longwood's second-lowest shooting percentage of the season with a .433 (26-of-60) from the floor. Longwood compensated with a season-high 18 offensive rebounds and a final rebounding advantage of 51-29, with a career-high 12 of those boards coming from junior Jordan Cintron.
 
"We have to prepare to play according to our principles," Aldrich said. "If we don't, we'll have an up-and-down team, and we'll have some good nights and some bad nights.
 
"The team that you saw tonight looked nothing like what we've seen earlier this week. So if we're not focused on doing what we practice and what we've been practicing since September, then we're not going to be a very competitive team."
 
On a night in which Longwood's starting senior backcourt duo of Shabooty Phillips and Jaylon Wilson combined for a season-low 14 points, the Lancer bench stepped up and shouldered the scoring load with 52 points. That included double-figure efforts from Nkereuwem and Wilson, an 11-point game from fellow newcomer DeShaun Wade, and the efficient 3-of-4 shooting effort from Flood.
 
Senior JaShaun Smith also produced a quiet nine points and seven rebounds from the starting lineup, hitting his 100th career three-pointer in the process.
 
On the defensive end, Randolph struggled against Longwood's height advantage and shot just .333 (20-of-60) from the floor and .250 (6-of-24) from three-point range. Guard Brian Smith was the lone Wildcat to reach double figures, finishing with 12 points, while CJ loving grabbed 12 rebounds but went 0-of-7 from the floor.
 
Now Longwood will embark on a stretch of six consecutive road games, beginning with this Monday's trip to DeKalb, Ill., where they will face Northern Illinois at 8 p.m. EST. That will be Longwood's fourth game in a seven-day span and the last game before the Lancers earn an eight-day break before hitting the road once more for a trip to the West Coast where they face UC Riverside and Pacific on Nov. 26 and 29.
 
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