FARMVILLE, Va. – Longwood University celebrated its 180th birthday Tuesday. The Lancer men's basketball team nearly delivered a big gift in the Big South Championship but instead settled for putting a bow on a breakthrough 2018-19 season.
 
In the postseason follow-up to a 2018-19 campaign that saw Longwood (15-17) win the second-most games of the program's Division I era, set the school three-point record, and put together one of the biggest turnarounds in all of Division I basketball this season, the 9-seed Lancers took 8-seed Hampton to the wire but fell short of a road upset in a 77-71 loss in the Big South Championship first round Tuesday evening at the Hampton Convocation Center.
 
Hampton All-Big South first team guard Jermaine Marrow carried the Pirates (15-15) with 28 points and six assists to hold off a Longwood team that tied the game with 4:54 to play and trailed just 72-69 with 22 seconds to play.
 
However, clutch free throw shooting and a timely three-point play by Greg Heckstall helped the Pirates survive a late comeback that saw Longwood hit four consecutive layups in the final minute, including two from Juan Munoz in a span of 11 seconds.
 
"How far these guys have come is really remarkable," said Longwood's first-year head coach Griff Aldrich, who finished third in the Big South Coach of the Year voting.
 
"We have a bunch of tears in the locker room, and that's a testament to how much they've poured into the program. I told them before the game they've done everything we've asked. They have committed themselves to doing the best they possibly can, and they have 15 wins. If anyone would have said at the beginning of the season we would have 15 wins, they probably would have been looked at pretty oddly. But that's a testament to how far they've come, and even more impressive to do it when the Big South is the best it's ever been."
 
The top-to-bottom quality of the Big South was on display in Tuesday's opening round when Hampton – picked by many as a darkhorse to make a run in the tournament – rode Marrow's 28 points and Greg Heckstall's 17 points and 10 rebounds to their sixth straight win. Marrow was a perfect 16-of-16 from the free throw line and played all 40 minutes en route to his 26th 20-point game of the season.
 
That effort was enough to offset a 23-point night from Longwood junior Jaylon Wilson, who continued his end-of-season breakout by scoring in double figures for the seventh time in his past nine games. JaShaun Smith also added 13 points on 6-of-9 shooting for Longwood, and Shabooty Phillips – who was presented with his All-Big South honorable mention medal before the game – scored 12 points.
 
"Marrow's a heck of a player, and he only scored 12 points from the field," Aldrich said. "He hit 16 free throws, and some of those are the end of the game, and that's a very frustrating statistic. He scores 28, but 16 on the line, that's tough.
 
"The bottom line is we played well enough to win. A shot here, a rebound there, a missed blockout there, a missed call here or there – that's just how it goes, and hat's the game. The reality is this team, as far as its come, the margin for error for us to be victorious at a championship level, you have to execute the details."
 
Longwood trailed by one at halftime and came storming out of the gate in the second half to take a 48-42 lead. However, Hampton rallied to score eight unanswered points and tie the game, forcing a back-and-forth ending that saw Longwood tie it on back-to-back shots by JaShaun Smith – one on a layup at 57-57, and another on a three-pointer at 60-60 with 7:26 to play. Smith tied it again with another layup at 62-62 with 4:54 to play, setting off a furious final five minutes that saw Longwood hold Hampton without a field goal for a span of more than four minutes.
 
However, the Pirates took advantage of multiple trips to the line, hitting 11 consecutive free throws in the final 2:15 to hold off Longwood's upset bid.
 
Those late free throws punctuated a lopsided advantage at the line for the Pirates, who hit 30-of-32 from the charity stripe compared to 9-of-14 by the Lancers.
 
The loss ends a breakout season for Longwood under Aldrich, who led the Lancers to the program's second-highest NCAA ranking since joining the Big South seven years ago. Longwood tied the school record for most Big South wins and totaled eight more overall wins then they had a year ago, putting Aldrich at the top of the list for win improvement among all 55 D-I coaches in the first year at their respective institutions in 2018-19.  
 
"This team is really competing, and it would have been very easy for them to go oh, we're 5-11, let's pack it in, but they came out here and gave Hampton everything they could handle," Aldrich said. "There's a chance we could be invited to one of these non-NCAA tournaments, so we may have some more basketball left, but we'll see how that all plays out."
 
A postseason bid not withstanding, the Lancers will return all but senior forward Spencer Franklin and graduate student Damarion Geter for the 2019-20 season under Aldrich, while welcoming an incoming class of four freshmen.
 
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