Longwood University Athletics

Games 23-25: Longwood (9-13, 0-0 Big South) at Gardner-Webb (1-10, 0-0 Big South)
Dates & Times	Game 1 at Gardner-Webb: March 20 • 1 p.m. Game 2 at Gardner-Webb: March 20 • 3 p.m. Game 3 at Gardner-Webb: March 21 • 1 p.m.
Location	Boiling Springs, N.C. (Masters Field)
Game Notes	Longwood | Gardner-Webb
Statistics	Longwood | Gardner-Webb
Video & Live Stats	Game 1: ESPN+ | Live Stats Game 2: ESPN+ | Live Stats Game 3: ESPN+ | Live Stats

The First Pitch
•    Longwood begins Big South play this weekend at Gardner-Webb in a showdown between the five-time league champion Lancers and the 2021 Big South preseason favorite Runnin' Bulldogs. 
•    Riding a five-game winning streak, the Lancers are playing their best softball of the season, batting .318 with 6.6 runs per game. The pitching staff has logged a 3.18 ERA and held opposing hitters to a .220 clip during that span as well, while the Lancer defense has made just four errors.
•    Longwood has won three of its past four series, sweeping Bucknell in a three-game set, winning two out of three against East Carolina, and taking both games of a doubleheader against Marshall. Longwood has won seven of its past 11 games.
•    The start of Big South play follows a grueling non-conference slate for the Lancers, who played three top-25 teams in No. 16 Georgia, No. 16 Duke and No. 18 South Carolina, as well as a Liberty team that has received votes in every USA Today/NFCA Top-25 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. 

Last Time Out
•    The Lancers continued their March resurgence last weekend, engineering a three-game sweep of Bucknell to extend their winning streak to five straight games.
•    The Lancers won the first two games of the series in walk-off fashion, as sophomore cleanup hitter Nia Green tagged a walk-off single in game one of Saturday's doubleheader and followed with a walk-off two-run homer in Saturday's nightcap.
•    Green drove in six RBI in the three-game series, while senior ace Sydney Backstrom earned wins in all three games. 
•    Backstrom fired 13.2 innings and logged a 1.54 ERA in the three-game series. 

By The Numbers
•    Longwood is among the most efficient base-stealing teams in the nation, coming up safe in 39-of-45 attempts this season. The Lancers rank second in the Big South and 35th nationally with 1.77 steals per game and 32nd in the country with a .867 stolen base success rate.
•    The Lancers have been successful in 19 of their past 20 stolen base attempts. They rattled off 19 consecutive steals before finally getting caught in the Sunday finale of this past weekend's series against Bucknell.
•    Shortstop Mason Basdikis has stolen 18 consecutive bases without getting caught, dating back to the start of her freshman year.
•    Of the 187 times Longwood batters have reached base safely this season, the Lancers have scored on 40.1 percent of those. That is the fourth-most efficient clip in the Big South trailing only league scoring leaders USC Upstate (54.4%) and Winthrop (41.7%), and Presbyterian (44.0%).
•    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 rank among the Big South's top four in hits (109), runs (75), RBI (69), doubles (26), triples (4), home runs (8) and walks (62).
•    Longwood has three of the Big South's top five run producers in Alexis Wayland (T-3rd, 15 RBI), Sydney Jacobsen (7th, 13) and Nia Green (8th, 11). Those three have combined to drive in 52.0 percent of Longwood's total runs.
•    The reigning Big South Player of the Week, Green hit .421 (8-of-19) with nine RBI, two homers and a double in seven games this past week. She put together three consecutive multi-hit games during that stretch, including a five-RBI, two-homer outburst in a 9-7 win over Bucknell that culminated with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the seventh.
•    The Lancers have won six of their seven Big South openers since joining the league in 2013, as well as six of their seven conference-opening series during that span. 
•    Since 2013, the only team to win a league-opening series against Longwood was Campbell in 2017. The Fighting Camels rallied a 7-6 extra-inning loss in game one to win the final two matchups and claim the series in Buies Creek, N.C., that year.
•    Longwood has won 18 consecutive Big South series dating back to the 2017 season. 
•    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.
•    Senior RHP Sydney Backstrom leads the Big South and ranks among the top 10 nationally with 74.2 innings pitched. She also ranks tied for third in the nation with 12 starts and 16 apperances, and tied for eighth with eight complete games.
•    Six of Longwood's nine wins have come in games Backstrom has started, while two others — a 3-2 upset of No. 16 Georgia and a 9-7 walk-off win over Bucknell — saw her come out of the bullpen to earn a save and another win, respectively.

Quotable
"Never in my 12 years of softball. It felt good."
 — Sophomore outfielder Nia Green on whether she had ever had a walk-off hit in her softball career. Green had back-toback walk-offs on the same day to power Longwood to a doubleheader sweep over Bucknell this past Friday, 4-3 and 9-7.

Series History
•    Longwood and Gardner-Webb meet for the 25th, 26th and 27th times in series history this Saturday and Sunday in Boiling Springs, N.C.
•    The Lancers have never lost to the Runnin' Bulldogs, amassing a perfect 2-0 record in a series that spans back to 2010. The Lancers are 23-0 against Gardner-Webb since joining the Big South Conference in 2013. 
•    Longwood is 21-0 against Gardner-Webb in the regular season and has swept each of the past seven series. 
•    The past two meetings have both been decided by one run, 5-4 on April 6-7, 2019. 
•    All six of the previous meetings between the teams have been played on Gardner-Webb's home field in Boiling Springs, N.C. 

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