NCAA Knoxville Regional: Longwood (37-20, 20-4 Big South) vs. No. 12 Tennessee (39-14, 14-10 SEC)
Dates	May 17-19, 2019
Times	Friday, May 17 -- 1:30 p.m.
Location	Knoxville, Tenn. | Lee Stadium
Tournament Bracket	NCAA Tournament Bracket
Game Notes	Longwood (PDF)
Season Statistics	Longwood (HTML) | Tennessee (PDF)
Live Stats	Tennessee Live Stats
Live Stream	ESPN3
Radio Stream	Kickin' Country 92.9 WVHL FM
Social Media	@LongwoodLancers | @LongwoodSB

Leading Off
• Longwood returns to the NCAA Regionals for the first time since the 2017 season where the Lancers prepare to face No. 12 national seed Tennessee Friday, May 17 at 1:30 p.m. at Lee Stadium.
• The Lancers clinched their third Big South regular season crown in the past five sea­sons and captured their fifth Big South Championship in seven seasons.
• In each of its last two appearances of the NCAA Tournament, Longwood has ad­vanced to the NCAA Regional Champion­ship game.
• Longwood has won its last 18 Big South se­ries dating back to the 2017 season. The last series the Lancers dropped came against Presbyterian.
• Hitting. 667 in the Big South Tournament landed redshirt-senior Karleigh Donovan Big South Tournament MVP honors. Dono­van collected eight hits in four games with three multi-hit games. Sydney Backstrom tossed a complete-game three-hitter in the championship game to join Donovan on the All-Tournament team, while Kaylynn 'Bug' Batten and Jordan Clark were also named to the All-Tournament team.

By The Numbers
• Longwood looks to get back to the NCAA Regionals in 2019, as the Lancers look to win their fifth Big South Championship in seven seasons.
• Longwood's 2019 slate pitted the four-time Big South Champion Lancers take against a stacked non-conference gauntlet that features matchups against SEC power Texas A&M, Big 12 power Tex­as and ACC foes Duke, North Carolina, Virginia and Virginia Tech. Those six Pow­er 5 teams make up a non-conference schedule whose teams combined for more than 550 wins last year, with seven of those foes winning at least 30 games a season ago. Overall the Lancers will face 10 teams that finished last season in the top 100 of the final RPI rankings.
• For the fourth straight season, Longwood was tabbed to win the Big South. Despite capturing four Big South Championships in its six previous seasons, the Lancers have only been tabbed to win the confer­ence in each of the last four seasons.
• Longwood returns six players that have earned Big South accolades throughout their career, including Kaylynn Batten, Karleigh Donovan, Sydney Gay, Desti­ny Martinez, Jordan Clark and Sydney Backstrom.
• Longwood softball head coach Kathy Riley is in her 22nd season leading the program. Longwood's all-time winningest coach, Riley has surpassed the 700-win mark at Longwood earlier this season and moved past career win No. 800 in Longwood's series win over Charleston Southern.
• In her 25 seasons of coaching, Kathy Rileyy has posted 23 consecutive seasons above the .500 mark. Her only two sea­sons below .500 were Riley's first two seasons at Mount Olive.

Last Time Out
• For the fifth time in seven seasons, Long­wood softball is the Big South champion.
• A complete game three-hitter from soph­omore Sydney Backstrom and a go-ahead suicide squeeze bunt laid down by senior Jessica Smith in the bottom of the sixth sent the No. 1 seed Lancers (37-19) to a 3-2 win over No. 4 seed Winthrop (30-26) in the Big South Championship game Saturday afternoon at Amanda Littlejohn Stadium.
• The title-game win came in comeback fash­ion for the Big South regular-season cham­pion Lancers, who scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth to overcome a 2-0 defi­cit. All-Big South freshman Sydney Jacob­sen scored the go-ahead run after drawing a walk, stealing second and advancing to third on a throwing error on the same play.
• Backstrom (19-10), whose lone blemish on the day came on a two-run home run by Winthrop senior Keleigh Romine in the top of the fifth, then locked up the win by work­ing around a two-out walk in the top of the seventh to complete her three-hit master­piece.
• Longwood's run of five Big South crowns in seven seasons is now one that has never been matched by any league counterpart.

What's At Stake …
• Longwood begins the NCAA Knoxville Regional seeking its third straight appear­ance in the NCAA Regional Championship game after advancing to the final game of the Regional in 2016 against James Madi­son and 2017 at Tennessee.
• Longwood seeks its first win all-time against Tennessee in six meetings and its second straight win against North Carolina and Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament.