DeLAND, Fla. – Sixty miles from Walt Disney World Sunday evening, the happiest place on Earth was Longwood's locker room.
Backed by season highs of 24 points from
Shabooty Phillips and 21 from
Jaylon Wilson, the Lancers (5-6) pulled out a 76-72 gut-check win over Stetson in a return to form that saw second-year head coach
Griff Aldrich's squad turn in one of their best all-around performances of the season.
In the first game following an eight-day break for exam week, Longwood hit 11 three-pointers, shot 84.0 percent from the free throw line and forced stops on five of Stetson's final seven possessions to emerge from a back-and-forth battle that featured 10 lead changes.
"How much did we need [the win]? Well the sun's coming up tomorrow if we don't get it, but the reality is it's important," Aldrich said. "The guys are fired up. They have real potential, and we just have to keep working and keep getting better consistently."
The victory snapped a five-game skid for the Lancers that was the longest of Aldrich's tenure and came at the end of a stretch of six consecutive road games. The Lancers have played in three different time zones during that span while playing away from their home in Willett Hall for a full month, but Sunday they rallied to bookend that gauntlet by handing Stetson (5-7) only its second home loss of the season.
Phillips and Wilson fueled the win, combining for 45 points and giving Longwood dueling 20-point performances on the same night this season. Those two hit a combined five go-ahead shots in the second half, including a pair of back-to-back three-pointers from Wilson and the free throw from Phillips that gave Longwood the lead for good with 1:42 to play.
"It hit me earlier that we haven't really had a close game," Aldrich said. "I guess Morgan State was an eight-point game, but this one, it came down to it. DeShaun [Wade] made the free throws at the end, and Shabooty made free throws at critical times. We got box-outs at critical times. They gutted out a win, and to do it on the road at the end of a long month when things haven't really gone your way, it's really a credit to these guys and their resiliency."
Longwood's final 12 points all came from the free throw line as the Lancers attacked an aggressive Hatter defense throughout the game, earned 25 free throws and matched a season high by making 21 of those. Phillips hit 7-of-8,
Jordan Cintron hit 9-of-10, and Wade hit two more with two seconds remaining to extend the lead back to two possessions.
Meanwhile, Wilson did his damage from beyond the arc where he finished 5-of-7 to match a career high for made treys and recorded his first 20-point game since pouring in 23 in Longwood's historic win over Southern Miss in the first round of last season's College Basketball Invitational.
"Jaylon played loose tonight. Shabooty played loose tonight. I'm just happy for those guys. I'm happy some shots went in, too," Aldrich said.
Sunday's win fuels to the Lancers' return trip to Farmville where they will prepare to host The Citadel this Thursday, Dec. 19, in a bid to extend their home win streak to six straight games. The Lancers boast a perfect 4-0 record on Jerome Kersey Court this season and rattled off three straight home wins during a seven-day span in mid-November before embarking on the road gauntlet they concluded Sunday.
"The guys work so hard. They started June 17. They feel it," Aldrich said. "They're working hard, they know when they make mistakes, and they have a very intense dude yelling at them many days out of the week pushing them to be their best. I'm just really excited for them tonight. I'll watch the film on the way home and then I can get cranky, but for right now we're just going to enjoy it."
#GoWood
