By CHRIS COOK
LongwoodLancers.com
Tonight on ESPNU, Longwood basketball returns to primetime. But the ever-evolving Lancer lineup that takes the court at 7 p.m. against undefeated Winthrop may bear only a slight resemblance to the once-injury-plagued squad that was beamed into living rooms around the country earlier this season.
For a Longwood basketball team that head coach
Griff Aldrich has billed as the most talented of his tenure, that's been a welcome transformation.
Following a start to the 2020-21 season that was a lesson in adversity and adaptation, Longwood's once-injury-plagued roster has slowly rounded into form over the past several weeks. Bolstered by the return of impact guards
Heru Bligen and
DeShaun Wade and high-flying forward
Leslie Nkereuwem, the January edition of Longwood basketball is deeper, more athletic, and finally inching closer toward the sky-high ceiling they envisioned for themselves in the preseason.
"Philosophically, we're starting to get back to playing Longwood basketball," said Aldrich, who in his first two seasons led Longwood to a bevy of milestones and firsts, including a program-record fourth-place Big South finish in 2019-20 and a trip to the College Basketball Invitational quarterfinals in 2018-19.
"When we had a little bit of a depleted roster, there was a lot more pressure on Juan [Munoz] and Justin [Hill] to make plays rather than let the offense work. Over the last couple of games, there's been more of a transition back to letting the ball move, letting the offense help create opportunities and making shots that way."
Since Bligen and Wade have settled back into the lineup following a six-game, injury-related hiatus at start the season, the numbers bear out that claim.
In the eight games since Bligen and Wade returned together, the Lancers have shown burgeoning on-court chemistry in the form of significantly reduced turnovers as well as a deep bench brimming with a newfound wealth of scorers. With a fully healthy Bligen and Wade in the lineup, the Lancers have given the ball way just 11.5 times in the past eight games, compared to 16.8 in six games prior.
Additionally, Longwood's bench has nearly doubled its scoring production, averaging 28.5 points per game during that span, compared to just 16.8 in the six games prior. Along with Bligen's contributions, Longwood's stable of reserves has also benefited from the addition of Hill, who started the first nine games of the year but has since moved to the bench where he is still averaging 9.4 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game.
The resulting lineup is more versatile, multi-faceted, and closer in line to what Aldrich envisioned when he began building this year's Longwood team years ago. And while still a work in progress, the Lancers' latest stage of evolution is coming at an opportune time in the heart of the Big South schedule.
"I really like this team," Aldrich said. "I think if you look at some of the analytics we've used over the years, we're really high for where we've been in the past. I feel like we're moving in the right direction. We have great kids, and we have a lot of really good, young pieces."
Aldrich has never wavered in his affinity for his third-year Longwood team, even when a series of ill-timed injuries gutted his rotation in the final weeks and days of the preseason. Despite the setbacks, he continued to harp on the wealth of talent and depth he saw from when the team first got together during the summer. However, he was just as quick to point out that what the Lancers lacked entering the year was experience, as 10 of his players had never suited up in a Longwood uniform and only two – Munoz and sophomore
Abraham Deng – had spent more than one full season in the program.
The key to success, he stated before the start of the season, was how long it would take the team to gain that experience.
"The missing component for this year's team is experience," said Aldrich in October. "The real question will be how quickly do we season, how quickly do we gain that experience. You're basically asking a lot of these guys to be more mature than their playing experience would dictate."
With several players on the sidelines, that process has taken longer than he would like, but it has accelerated dramatically with the team's recent return to health.
"Now we're getting our team back, but the thing I hate is that just now we're trying to reinforce things like fighting on every possession, having to move the ball on every possession," he said Thursday. "But I think you're starting to see some of that improvement.
"The last four or five games have been our lowest in turnovers, percentage-wise, all season. That goes back to our culture and being able to lock and say hey, we have everyone back and now we can really focus less on who we're going to play and now how we're going to play."
Along with fewer turnovers and a defense that enters tonight's game ranked as the second-lowest scoring defense in the conference, Longwood has showed its newfound depth with at least four double-digit scorers in three of the past four games. That is by design and a byproduct of the team buying into the program's basketball philosophy just as much as it is simply having more players available any given night.
"We're definitely much more of a by-committee offensive team," Aldrich said. "We very much want the ball to move. I think we feel we're going to be much more impactful if we have a lot of guys in the 8-12 or 6-14 scoring range as opposed to somebody having 25 and everybody else in single digits."
The improvements have led Longwood to recent Big South wins over both Campbell and UNC Asheville in the past two weeks. Both of those victories saw the Lancers hold off late-game charges, signaling a turning of the tide in a Big South gauntlet that has seen the inexperienced Lancers suffer their six conference losses by an average of just 5.1 points per game.
But coming with each of those losses has been a lesson, and Longwood now has more players on the court absorbing the teachings of those defeats. Tonight's test against Winthrop will be Longwood's toughest of that conference slate so far, but the Lancers will at least meet it head on with the closest to a full deck they've had all season. And tonight on ESPNU, tor the first time all season, the sports world will get to see what a healthy Longwood team can do.
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