The Opening Tip
•   After a grueling road stretch in which they played 10 of 12 games away from home, Longwood returns to Willett Hall Thursday to host Presbyterian and begin a home-heavy slate. The Presbyterian game will be the first in a span that sees the Lancers host six of their next nine opponents at home.
•   Longwood opened the season 4-0 at home for the second straight season under head coach
Griff Aldrich and is 14-7 on their home court since he took over the program in 2018-19.
•   Senior
JaShaun Smith is just 79 points shy of reaching 1,000 for h         is career. He would be Longwood's 23rd player to reach that milestone.
•   Eight of the past 10 matchups between Longwood and Presbyterian have been decided by single digits. Two of the past three games in Farmville have been decided by one possession.
•   Presbyterian assistant Trey Meyer and Longwood director of operations
Riley McGillan were both student assistants with Clemson men's basketball.
Last Time Out
•   The nation's No. 5 leading scorer Jermaine Marrow poured in 30 points, and Greg Heckstall delivered back-to-back three-pointers in the closing minutes to secure Hampton's nail-biting 83-80 win over Longwood Saturday evening at the Hampton Convocation Center.
•   Marrow scored 17 of his 30 points in the second half to put Hampton over the top in a back-and-forth battle that saw Longwood tie the game twice inside the final six minutes.
•   Buoyed by Marrow's 30 and the two crunch-time three-pointers from Heckstall, the Pirates broke open a 66-66 deadlock with five minutes to play and ended the game on a 17-14 run.Â
•   Lancer forward
JaShaun Smith cut the lead back to one point with a made three-pointer at the 3:27 mark, but Hampton responded with a 9-1 run to clinch the victory.
•  Â
Shabooty Phillips led Longwood with 19 points, and
Juan Munoz added 17 off the bench.
By The Numbers
•   Longwood is 14-7 in Willett Hall in two seasons under head coach
Griff Aldrich. Longwood is 4-2 at home this season with one of those losses coming in triple overtime against The Citadel, 102-99.
•   Senior point guard
Shabooty Phillips is on a seven-game tear in which he is averaging 14.1 points per game and shooting .371 (13-of-35) from three-point range. He has two 20-point games and a 19-point outburst in that span. In his 10 games prior, he averaged just 8.6 points per game, shot .298 from long range and scored in double figures just twice.
•   Freshman guard
Heru Bligen has logged 20-plus minutes off the bench in two of his past four games, including a career-high 27 minutes his last time out against Hampton. He scored a career-high 11 points in that outing for his first career double-figure scoring game.
•   Point guards
Juan Munoz and Phillips have both led Longwood in points, rebounds and assists in a single game this season. Phillips did it in a win over Stetson on Dec. 15 with 24 points, six rebounds and five assists, while Munoz did it in Longwood's last game, a win at Charleston, with 17 points, seven rebounds and four assists.
•   Munoz, a redshirt sophomore, is the Big South's No. 3 bench scorer with 8.4 points per game. He has come off the bench in 12 of his 15 games and also ranks fifth in the Big South with 3.2 assists per game and eighth with 1.7 steals.
•   Munoz has at least one steal in nine straight games and is averaging 2.3 per game in that stretch.
•   Longwood has had a double-digit scorer off the bench in 13 of 17 games this season. The Lancer bench contributes 30.2 points per game, or 44.0 percent of the team's total.
•   The Lancers compiled a team GPA of 3.13 during the fall 2019 semester, which ranks as the program's highest of the Division I era.
Quotable
"We talk about focus and effort. It's on our wall in the locker room. We talk about being insanely focused on the details, and that's what it is. It's a commitment on each possession to doing what we do."
— Longwood head coach
Griff Aldrich after Saturday's 83-80 loss at Hampton
Series History
•   Longwood and Presbyterian meet for the 13th time in series history and the first time in the 2019-20 season Thursday at Willett Hall.Â
•   Presbyterian has won four straight games and owns a 9-3 record in the series, which began with an 82-71 Presbyterian victory on Jan. 26, 2013, Longwood's first season as a member of the Big South.
•   Longwood and Presbyterian met just once during the 2018-19 season, Lancer head coach
Griff Aldrich's first as head coach.
•   Longwood's last win over the Blue Hose came on Jan. 4, 2017, 79-76 in Willett Hall.
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