CHARLESTON, S.C. – Mired in a midseason stretch dominated by a grueling road gauntlet and a heart-breaking triple-overtime home loss, Longwood men's basketball has heard head coach
Griff Aldrich repeatedly implore a commitment to aggressiveness, competitiveness and focus.
Wednesday night at Charleston Southern, the Lancers showed him all three.
Led by a combined 32 points from former AAU teammates
Juan Munoz and
JaShaun Smith and a defensive performance that was among Longwood's best to date, Longwood (6-10, 1-2 Big South) controlled the game from the opening tip and ran away from Charleston Southern 74-56 Wednesday evening at CSU Field House for its first Big South win of the season.
"This is the team we've been looking for," Aldrich said.
Munoz and Smith, the fourth-year Lancer duo from North Carolina's basketball-rich Triangle area, spearheaded a sharpshooting offensive effort with Munoz scoring a career-high 17 points and Smith 15. Both contributed on the defensive end as well, helping Longwood hold the Buccaneers to a .328 (18-of-55) shooting percentage that was their lowest at home all season.
Charleston Southern (7-8, 1-2 Big South) hit just 5-of-31 three-pointers and got only five points from the Big South's No. 9 scorer Phlandrous Fleming, who entered the night on a streak of four consecutive 20-point games. However, the 6-4, 195-pound junior went just 2-of-11 from the field and 0-of-8 from three-point range.
"Our defense, that was really the story of the game in my view," Aldrich said. "Credit to the staff, who put together a great defensive gameplan. They did a great job getting our guys prepared, and our guys were very clear on what they needed to do to try and stop Charleston Southern."
The victory came against a Buccaneer team that entered the game winners of six of the past eight games, including a road win at Mizzou, and was picked for a top-five finish in the Big South Preseason Poll. Longwood snapped Charleston Southern's three-game home-court win streak and dealt the Bucs only their second home loss of the season in one of the Big South's toughest venues.
It was the first victory over Charleston Southern for any Lancer on Longwood's roster and snapped the Buccaneers' six-game win streak in the series, and Aldrich placed nearly all of the credit on Longwood's defensive effort.
"Our offense sputtered at the beginning of the second half, painfully so," Aldrich said. "What got us back was our defense. "I think we had a few steals, but guys really sat down and competed on the defensive end and got us some good breakaway shots that reclaimed the momentum and energy.
"When our offense isn't clicking, you have to have a strong defense. To be honest, in this day and age, kids play hard defensively when their shots are going down. We've been guilt of that quite a bit this year, and I was really pleased to see them step up when Charleston Southern started to make a run in the second half."
Longwood's dominant effort began from the start, as Munoz lit the fuse with 13 first-half points and fanned the flames with back-to-back three-pointers that pushed the Lancer lead to 14 with 6:24 to play. The Lancers hit 6-of-9 treys in that opening frame and held Charleston Southern to just one field goal during a seven-minute stretch in which they strung together a 21-2 run and built a lead that got no lower than seven points the rest of the way.
Longwood maintained that pace to the final buzzer, hitting 11-of-29 three-pointers and getting multiple treys from five different players. Munoz and Smith were among that group, as were guards
Jaylon Wilson and sophomore
DeShaun Wade, who finished with 10 points apiece.
"One of our emphases was to really move the ball," Aldrich said. "When we're making shots, the floor starts to get spaced, and people starting running at you. Juan's very good at getting into the paint and being nifty with that. … He's strung a few good games together now where he's really trying to compete. That's really what we need every night. I think he continued to compete. He didn't have a huge second half offensively, but I think he still brought it defensively and led us."
Munoz also added a career-high seven rebounds and four assists, while the senior Smith's 15 points pushed him over 900 for his career and inched him closer to a 1,000-point plateau that only 22 players in program history have reached.
"We have to take this momentum," Aldrich said. "I want to enjoy this one, and I'll have a nice six-hour bus ride to do that. These guys have battled so hard and they've been in just such a tough stretch. I'm really thrilled for them to be able to experience some of the fruit of their hard work. They have really practiced hard.
"They're a group that really wants to do well and wants to do what the coaches ask them to do. We don't always do it very well and at times tonight that was no different, but the reality is I thought they outplayed Charleston Southern. They out-competed. We have to learn from this and take the good stuff and just enjoy it."
Now the Lancers will get two days to prepare for another road matchup Saturday, which sends them to their newest in-state Big South rival Hampton for a 6 p.m. tipoff. Prior to that game, the Longwood Office of Alumni and Career Services will host a pregame social at Phoebus Dive Bar, approximately one mile from the Hampton Convocation Center. Registration for that event is available at:
https://www.longwoodnetwork.com/2020-longwood-at-hampton
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