LEXINGTON, Va. – Some lessons are learned the hard way. For a youthful Longwood team still finding its footing two games into an unorthodox 2020-21 season, VMI was a willing teacher Tuesday night.
 
Behind a second straight 20-point game from senior guard Greg Parham, the Keydets (2-1) wore down the Lancers and pulled away in the final 10 minutes en route to an 84-71 win and a sixth consecutive non-conference home victory in Cameron Hall.
 
"As I told the guys, credit VMI – they just simply outcompeted us tonight," said Longwood head coach Griff Aldrich. "From start to finish, they outcompeted us. That is a centerpiece to who we want to be, and we fell short. [VMI] just wanted it more, and I think you saw it throughout the game."
 
The Keydets wore down a shorthanded Longwood (0-2) squad that for the second straight game played without key guards DeShaun Wade and Heru Bligen, both sidelined with injuries. In place of those two veterans, the Lancers dug into their deep but unseasoned bench and started a pair of freshmen – Jesper Granlund and Justin Hill – for the second straight game while also calling on four other Lancers who were playing for only the second time in a Longwood uniform.
 
"This is our second competition," Aldrich said. "These feel to me a little bit more like scrimmages than actual games. At one level, I'm just happy to be playing. These are teaching points for us. You learn lessons. You want to learn them hopefully with wins, but we learned a tough lesson today."
 
Parham and his fellow Keydets doled out those lessons behind a stifling defensive effort and a multi-pronged offensive attack that produced four double-digit scorers. Parham's 22 led the way, while fellow backcourt mates Sean Conway (19 points) and Kamdyn Curfman (11) and senior center Jake Stephens (13) also hit double figures.
 
Longwood (0-2) kept pace for the first 30 minutes of the game, with both teams trading the lead seven times and neither stringing together more than seven unanswered points. However, with the score tied 49-49 at the 12:48 mark, the Keydets broke the game open with a 14-6 run bookended by a Parham three-pointer that extended the lead to nine points. VMI led by at least two possessions the rest of the way.
 
An off-shooting night caught up to the Lancers in the end with the team hitting just 2-of-11 field goals during a stretch of 6:48 after Parham's punctuating three-pointer. The lone buckets during that stretch came from the freshmen Granlund and Hill, who for the second straight game both played 30-plus minutes.
 
Hill finished with 15 points and Granlund 8, while veteran point guard Juan Munoz led the team for a second straight game with 18. Hill dished six assists and attempted a team-high 21 field goals, while fellow newcomer Zac Watson – a junior transfer from UC Riverside – also flirted with a double-double with eight points and eight rebounds.
 
However, baskets were hard to come by all night for Longwood against VMI's defense, as the Lancers shot just .394 (26-of-66) from the floor and made 6-of-26 three-pointers. The Lancers did cut down on their turnovers by half from the season opener against Wake Forest, cutting that number from 24 to 12, but VMI compounded Longwood's shooting woes with a 46-34 rebounding advantage and 21 fastbreak points.
 
"You have to elevate your focus on the defensive end [when shots aren't falling]," said Aldrich, whose 2019-20 Lancers finished as the third-best defensive team in the Big South holding opponents to 68.6 points per game.
 
"I actually thought we had a lot of good looks, we just missed a bunch of them. But you have to really lock in and understand my shot's not going and I can't just play even. I have to elevate my level of focus on defense and increase my level of urgency on the defensive end in order to get the ball back. We weren't very good at that tonight."
 
The win was VMI's second at home this season and sixth straight against a non-conference opponent in Cameron Hall. The Lancers, meanwhile, are off to an 0-2 start for the first time under Aldrich in the follow-up to a breakthrough 2019-20 season in which they finished a program-record fourth in the final Big South standings.
 
"This is a journey," Aldrich said. "This is step two in a long season, hopefully. It didn't turn out the way we wanted, we didn't play with the execution and discipline we wanted, and we got outcompeted. So for us this is a process. We just need to continue to stay focused on what our overall mission is, which is to get better as a basketball team every day, understand where we fell short, work to address those issues and hopefully improve.
 
"The goal here for us is to learn these lessons and continue to grow as a basketball team. As we continue to do that, good things will happen."
 
Longwood will have a quick turnaround before its next matchup, which will send the Lancers back to Farmville for the 2020-21 home opener against Regent in Willett Hall. That game will tip off at 6 p.m. and air on ESPN+ and WVHL 92.9 FM.
 
#GoWood