BALTIMORE – Sometimes lessons come the hard way. For Longwood men's basketball Saturday at Morgan State, those lessons came at the expense of a 73-65 road loss.
 
Morgan State guard Stanley Davis poured in a game-high 18 points and sparked a high-scoring first half that lifted the Bears (4-7) past Longwood 73-65 but in turn left Longwood head coach Griff Aldrich encouraged about the growth of his team during a road swing that has been the team's most grueling stretch of the season.
 
"This is the first time I feel like we've started to look like ourselves since maybe St. Francis Brooklyn," Aldrich said. "As the Morgan State coach told me, 'Y'all are going to be good.' He understood we were getting wide-open shots and missing. Conversely, they were making theirs. Credit to them – they made shots."
 
Davis made several of those en route to padding his team scoring lead with his seventh double-figure scoring game of the season. The Morgan State senior played equal parts distributor and scorer to give the Bears a 40-32 halftime lead and then hold off a second-half surge that saw the Lancers (4-6) open an 8-0 run that closed the gap to two points with 9:32 left to play.
 
However, after that Lancer run put the game back to within one possession at 53-51, Davis helped kill the rally over the ensuing five minutes by setting up a Morgan State three-pointer with a steal, following with a putback layup, and punctuating the Bears' response with a fastbreak dunk that pushed the lead back to double figures with 2:27 to play. Morgan State cruised to victory the rest of the way.
 
"We talk to our guys all the time about being execution-focused and not result-focused," Aldrich said. "The reality is we got a lot of open shots. We'll have to go look at the tape, but my bet is we're going to see a lot of really good possessions."
 
"The ball was flying around for us. One of the things we've really struggled with over the past three or four games is the offense has been, not lethargic, but not the way we play. Today I thought we played the way we play, we just didn't make shots. … So many times I was clapping saying good offense. If you run a good play and execute well and the ball doesn't go in, ok I can live with that."
 
Longwood put together its best offensive performance to this point of the six-game road swing with 65 points, nine made three-pointers, 18 made free throws and 23 free throw attempts – all highs for the first five of those contests. During that five-game span, the Lancers have played at Northern Illinois, UC Riverside and Pacific in California, North Carolina A&T in Greensboro and Morgan State in Baltimore, going nearly a month without playing on their home court in Willett Hall.
 
Saturday at Morgan State Longwood shows signs of breaking out of an uncharacteristic shooting slump that has plagued them since the start of the gauntlet, but Davis and the Bears countered it with solid shooting night of their own.
 
Davis' 18 points were the second most Longwood's Big South-leading defense has allowed to an opposing player this season and allowed Morgan State to become only the fourth team to score at least 70 points against Longwood this season. Davis was one of four Bears to score in double figures alongside Sherwyn Devonish (16 points), Lagio Grantsaan (13) and Isaiah Burke (10).
 
Those four helped Morgan State overcome a bounceback game from Longwood senior Jaylon Wilson, who shook off an early-season slump by delivering 15 points, four steals and a perfect 11-of-11 shooting performance from the free throw line. Wilson's performance came off the bench and was his first double-digit scoring game since he opened the year with four consecutive double-digit performances.
 
Along with Wilson's 15, newly-inserted starter DeShaun Wade poured in 13 for his team-leading fifth double-digit scoring game of the season. He hit three of Longwood's nine three-pointers and added a pair of steals over his season-high 28 minutes on the court. Shabooty Phillips added nine points and three assists, while fellow guard Juan Munoz continued his efficiency at the point with five assists, five points and just two turnovers.
 
"I told the guys I'm not focused on winning this particular game," Aldrich said. "My focus is on the journey of this team and the development of this team. Northern Illinois taught us a very important lesson, which was we need to rebound. Morgan State is a top-100 offensive rebounding team, and to hold a top-100 rebounding team to seven offensive rebounds – without Jordan Cintron in the game – our team has clearly taken a step to understand that.
 
"After the Marymount and Randolph games, I was not really pleased with how we were playing and the decision-making of our point guards," Aldrich said. "The lesson there was we have to make good decisions on each and every single possession. Well they didn't understand that when you beat somebody by 20. When you then go play Northern Illinois and UC Riverside and you're in a tight game, and you give up three or four possessions because of poor decision-making, they then start to understand why we say every possession matters."
 
Longwood now has just one game remaining in its six-game road stretch with a matchup at Stetson looming next Sunday, Dec. 15, in DeLand, Fla. Longwood will follow that game by returning home to host The Citadel in Willett Hall on Thursday, Dec. 19.
 
"This is extremely valuable, to go on the road and have to play these game," Aldrich said. "Morgan State's a good basketball team. They have some really talented guys, and the biggest thing for me is I felt like tonight we started to look and play a little bit more like what I expect Longwood basketball to be like."
 
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