Longwood University Athletics

Games 20-22: Longwood (6-13) vs. Bucknell (2-0)
Dates & Times	Game 1 vs. Bucknell: March 13 • 4 p.m. Game 2 vs. Bucknell: March 13 • 6 p.m. Game 3 vs. Bucknell: March 14 • 12 p.m.
Location	Farmville, Va. (Willett Hall)
Game Notes	Longwood | Bucknell
Statistics	Longwood | Bucknell
Live Stats	Longwood Live Stats

The First Pitch
•    Continuing a five-game homestand, Longwood hosts Bucknell for a three-game series this Saturday and Sunday at Lancer Field.
•    The Lancers are coming off a doubleheader sweep over Marshall in Wednesday's home opener. Those wins extended a March resurgence in which Longwood has won four of its past eight games with series victories against East Carolina and Marshall.
•    The Lancers opened the season with 17 consecutive road games, including four early-season tournaments taking place in four different states.
•    Longwood's early-season gauntlet has pitted them against three top-25 teams, as well as a Liberty squad that has received votes in every USA Today/NFCA Coaches Poll this season. In total, Longwood has seven scheduled games against top-25 teams and six others against teams that are receiving votes this season.
•    Longwood has one top-25 win to its credit in 2021 with a 3-2 takedown of No. 16 Georgia on Feb. 20.
•    Longwood is under the leadership of first-year head coach Dr. Megan Brown, whose coaching career has included stints at Auburn, Boston College and Cal. She took over the Lancer program in August of 2020 following the retirement of 820-game winner and three-time Big South Coach of the Year Kathy Riley. 
•    The Lancers have won five of the Big South's past seven conference championships, including the league's postseason tournament in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 and regular-season titles in 2015, 2016 and 2019.
•    Longwood has won three consecutive home openers dating back to the 2018 season.

Last Time Out
•    Behind a pair of shutdown relief appearances from Leigha Hill, nearly perfect defense, and a lineup that banged out a combined 18 hits in the twinbill, the Lancers swept a doubleheader against Marshall 5-2 and 7-5 in their home opener.
•    Hill earned the save in game one with 3.0 shutout innings and followed by securing the win in game two behind 4.1 innings of one-run ball.
•    The Lancers also played nearly error-free defense across the 14 innings, making just one error.
•    Freshman Lauren Fox had a coming-out party by going a combined 6-for-6 in the twinbill and stealing two bases. Junior Alexis Wayland also drove in five runs, including a two-run homer.

By The Numbers
•    Longwood has won two of its past three series, winning two out of three games against East Carolina at the Liberty Softball Classic this past weekend and sweeping a home doubleheader against Marshall Wednesday.
•    The Lancers have played nearly perfect defense over the past four games, committing just three errors while stringing together back-to-back errorless performances in that span. Longwood converted 58 consecutive fielding chances without an error during the four-game stretch. 
•    The Lancers have stolen 25 bases this season, the third most in the Big South. Longwood's .833 stolen base success rate is also the third best in the league among teams with at least 20 attempts.
•    Despite facing some of the best pitchers in the nation during an early-season stretch that has has pitted them against three top-25 teams, the Lancers lead the Big South with 19 doubles and rank among the league's top three in hits (86), runs (54), RBI (50), triples (3), total bases (123), walks (54) and stolen bases. 
•    Longwood also leads the Big South in sacrifice bunts (8), with senior Leah Powell laying down a conference-leading four of those.
•    Sophomore Nia Green has launched four doubles this season, tied for the most in the Big South. 
•    Longwood's No. 3 and 4 batting tandem of Sydney Jacobsen and Alexis Wayland has driven in 23 of Longwood's 54 runs. Wayland owns the team lead with 12 RBI — bolstered by a five-RBI outburst in Wednesday's doubleheader against Marshall — while Jacobsen has driven in 11.
•    Freshman outfielder Lauren Fox has hits in six consecutive plate appearances. 
•    Senior RHP Sydney Backstrom leads the Big South and ranks 14th nationally with 61.0 innings pitched. She also ranks tied for fourth in the nation with 10 starts, tied for fifth with 13 apperances, and tied for ninth with six complete games.
•    Lancer junior 3B Mason Basdikis is a perfect 6-for-6 stealing bases this season and 26-of-29 for her career. She has swiped 14 in a row and has not been caught since her freshman year.
•    Four of Longwood's six wins have come in games Backstrom has started, while another — a 3-2 upset of No. 16 Georgia — saw her earn a two-out save after coming into the game in the bottom of the seventh.
•    Backstrom has thrown 53 percent of Longwood's total innings this season and has appeared in 13 of 19 games overall.
•    Longwood has played the most games in the Big South with 19, doing so despite a four-game opening-weekend series at NC State getting canceled due to inclement weather. The Lancers have played at least five games in three straight weekends and have seven scheduled this week.
•    Ten of Longwood's originally scheduled 35 non-conference games this season are against teams from the ACC and SEC. The Lancers face four teams rankedin the USA Today/NFCA Coaches Poll Top 25 and two others that have received votes in every poll.
•    Longwood pitchers have induced 8.93 groundouts per game, second most in the Big South.
•    Since making the jump to the Division I level in 2008, Longwood has advanced to five NCAA Regionals. All of those have come by way of the Big South's automatic bid, as the Lancers have won five of the past seven Big South Championship postseason tournaments.
•    Since joining the Big South, Longwood players have received league-leading 43 All-Big South awards, including first team, second team and honorable mention. The next closest to Longwood is former Big South member Liberty, which had 27 until leaving the conference after the 2018 season.

Quotable
"Tonight definitely showed us we can make adjustments in the box. We can hit well. Our pitching was great, we're finally settling in, and our defense played great. We're taking all the little things we've needed to do and putting them together."
 — Senior pitcher Sydney Backstrom following the doubleheader sweep over Marshall Wednesday

Series History
•    Longwood and Bucknell meet for the first time in three seasons to renew a series that Longwood leads 6-1. 
•    The teams last met at the 2018 Seahawk Softball Classic, hosted by UNC Wilmington, where they split a two-game series. 
•    Longwood won the first five games in the series, which began at the Lancer Leadoff Classic in Farmville in 2008. That game, which Longwood won 3-2, was only the Lancers' second game as a fully fledged Division I institution.
•    The Bison won their first game in the series on Feb. 23, 2018, 7-4 at the Seahawk Softball Classic.
•    Six players remain on Longwood's roster from the last time the Lancers played Bucknell: fifth-year seniors Kasey Carr and Destiny Martinez, and true seniors Sydney Backstrom, Mallory Odell, Leah Powell and Arleigh Wood.

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