STATESBORO, Ga. --Â Sitting at 3-1 overall for the first time since the 2013-14 season, the Longwood women's basketball team heads to Georgia Southern Saturday at 11 a.m., for the return engagement of a two-game series that began last December.
STORYLINES
â–ª The Lancers have won three of their first four games for only the third time in their Division I history. Longwood won its first three games of the 2006-07 season, beating American, Norfolk State and North Florida, before falling at William & Mary that year. In 2013-14, the Lancers dropped the opener at Seton Hall before defeating W&M, Utah Valley and Xavier.
▪ In the four games to begin the season, at least eight players put their names in the scoring column. Against Lincoln (Pa.) on Nov. 4, all nine players to see the court scored. On Nov. 7, at Norfolk State, 10 of the 11 players to appear in the contest tallied points. In last Sunday's 102-21 homecoming victory over Hood, 12 of the 13 players on the roster scored, and in Wednesday's win at American, eight players scored with only one in double figures.
â–ª That player in double figures at American was sophomore forward and Valdosta, Ga., native Otaifo Esenabhalu, who posted game highs of 10 points and 13 rebounds in the 59-41 win. The double-double was Esenabhalu's second consecutive and the fourth of her career. She is the first Longwood player to collect back-to-back double-doubles since Akila Smith in Longwood's Big South championship season of 2021-22.
â–ª Longwood has played lockdown defense to start the year, forcing 29.5 turnovers per game, a figure that is 12th best in the NCAA.
SCOUTING THE EAGLES
Georgia Southern is 3-0 to start the year under first-year head coach Hana Haden, who was the WBCA Division II National Coach of the Year in 2023-24. Haden led Georgia Southwestern State to the Elite Eight with a record of 29-4.
Georgia Southern won at Ohio, 82-70, and North Florida, 81-65, to begin the season before defeating Bethune-Cookman, 54-50, on Tuesday at home.
The Eagles, who returned just one player from last year's squad that finished 15-18 after starting 11-2, are led in scoring by Delaware transfer Nakiya Mays-Prince. She is averaging 12.7 points off the bench. Missouri State transfer Indya Green and Liv Fuller are pulling down nine rebounds per game, respectively.Â
Saturday's game is the last scheduled game for Georgia Southern in Hanner Fieldhouse The Eagles will move to the new Jack and Ruth Ann Hill Convocation Center starting with a Dec. 5 game against Jacksonville.
LAST TIME OUT
Longwood cemented its 59-41 win at American Wednesday by holding the Eagles scoreles over a nine-minute stretch, spanning halftime, which saw the lead grow to as many as 16 points with 2:37 remaining in the third quarter. The victory was the Lancers' second all-time against AU and first since a 66-59 triumph in Washington to open the 2006-07 season.
The Longwood defense forced 27 Eagles' turnovers and collected 16 steals, including five each by Malea Brown and Kiki McIntyre, to keep the American offense out of sorts. AU shot just 29.3 percent from the field, making only 17 field goals in the game.
LAST TIME VERSUS GEORGIA SOUTHERN
Terren Ward scored a game-high 25 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to lead Georgia Southern to an 87-65 victory over the Longwood women's basketball team at Joan Perry Brock Center when the teams played Dec. 22, 2023.
Ward secured her eighth straight double-double and shot 8-for-17 from the floor and 6-of-9 from 3-point range, helping the Eagles to their eighth consecutive win.
Graduate guard Anne-Hamilton LeRoy paced Longwood with a season-high 23 points – including 14 in the fourth quarter – shooting 9-of-17 on the day.
 She was honored prior to tip-off for eclipsing the 1,000-point mark in 2022-23.Â
LeRoy hit her 100th career 3-pointer late in the fourth quarter, finishing the game 2-for-5 from distance.
LANCERS SEVENTH IN BIG SOUTH POLL
Longwood was picked seventh in the 2024-25 Big South preseason poll, announced at the conference media day in Charlotte, on Oct. 15. The Lancers earned 30 points in the poll to finish ahead of Presbyterian (23 points) and UNC Asheville (17).Â
For the fourth consecutive season and fifth time overall, High Point was chosen first with five first-place votes and 76 total points, followed by Radford with 57 points and one first-place nod and Charleston Southern with 55 points.
Winthrop in fourth, Gardner-Webb in sixth and the Blue Hose in eighth received the remaining first-place votes.Â
IF YOU BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM
Senior guard Mariah Wilson transferred to Longwood after playing her first three seasons and 60 career games at Towson from 2021-24. Wilson averaged 1.5 points and 0.6 rebounds per game in 5.8 minutes for the Tigers.Â
When head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery brought her team to TU Arena Nov. 12, 2022, Wilson played three minutes in an 83-72 Towson victory.
Wilson scored 11 points each in her first two games with the Lancers after only tallying double digits two times at Towson.
WELCOME BACK
Longwood assistant coach Ivana Boyd is back in Farmville for her second stint on head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery's staff.Â
Boyd, who played for Lang-Montgomery at Flagler, graduating in 2020, followed her college coach to southside Virginia as a volunteer assistant when the latter took over the program in the 2022-23 season. Boyd spent a season away as an assistant coach under Special Jennings at Jacksonville in 2023-24, helping the Dolphins to an 11-20 overall record, 5-10 in the Atlantic Sun Conference.
LUCKY 7
The Lancers will play half of their 14 non-conference games in the friendly confines of the Joan Perry Brock Center this season. That reflects a stark contrast from 2023-24 in which Longwood played seven consecutive non-league games away from Farmville from Nov. 15 at James Madison to Dec. 17 at William & Mary, traveling approximately 4,534 miles in that span.
DUNCAN CLASSIC
The Lancers are set to host their first in-season tournament since the 2010-11 season when South Carolina State, McNeese and William & Mary join Longwood in Farmville for the Shirley Duncan Classic on Dec. 6-8.Â
The event is named in honor of Shirley Duncan, the all-time winningest coach in Longwood women's basketball history. A 2016 Longwood athletics hall of fame inductee, and one of four associated with the women's basketball program to be part of the hall of fame, Duncan led the Lancers to a 355-263 (.575) record from 1983-05 with four NCAA Division II tournament appearances.
LET'S PLAY TWO!
Longwood freshman forward Montgomery Bedford, a 6-foot-2 native of Baltimore, Md., and product of Baltimore City College, who was recruited to Farmville to play women's lacrosse for the Lancers, walked onto the women's basketball team this fall. Bedford is believed to be one of just four dual-sport student-athletes on Division I women's basketball rosters this season.Â
The others are Santa Clara forward Lauren Glover, who also plays for the Broncos' women's volleyball team; Cincinnati guard Daylee Dunn, also a member of the Bearcats' track and field team and Cal State Fullerton guard/forward Samantha Schuler, who is also on the Titans' track and field team.
Bedford is the first two-sport student-athlete to play women's basketball at Longwood since Mallory Odell did it from 2017-21, also playing for the softball team.
MS. 1,000
Longwood graduate student point guard Kiki McInytre needs 91 points to reach 1,000 for her career. The Boston native averaged 6.6 points per game last season, appearing in all 30 contests. She averaged 10.9 points per game in 61 games playing at NCAA Division II St Leo, scoring 663 points from 2020-23.
REINSON ON THE CALL
Former Longwood women's basketball head coach Bill Reinson, who coached the Lancers for parts of eight seasons from 2010-18, winning 58 games, returns to Farmville to join the "Voice of the Lancers" Sam Hovan on the call of selected home ESPN+ broadcasts from the Joan Perry Brock Center in 2024-25.
STUDENT-ATHLETES
No fewer than 10 Longwood women's basketball student-athletes were named to the 2023-24 Big South Presidential Honor Roll in June. To be included on the list, student-athletes must maintain at least a 3.0 grade-point average (on a 4.0 scale) for the academic year.Â
The players who achieved the feat were Lainey Bone, Malea Brown, Stephanie Davis, Otaifo Esenabhalu, Amor Harris, Kiki McIntyre, Nalani Simmons, Janay Turner Frances Ulysse and Bailey Williams.
Additionally, the Lancers earned their highest semester team grade-point average in history at 3.42 in the spring with McIntyre, Simmons and Turner collecting perfect 4.0 GPAs for the term.
STUDENT-ATHLETES, PART II
Kiki McIntyre and Bailey Williams were named to the 2023-24 College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team®. To be eligible, student-athletes must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.5 and be starter or key contributor to their team.
THREE'S COMPANY
The Lancers went 9-for-27 (33.3 percent) from 3-point range against Hood on last Sunday. It marked the the second time this season and fourth in head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery's Longwood tenure that the Lancers made that many from distance.
The Lancers went 9-for-20 (45 percent) at Norfolk State on Nov. 7.
Longwood buried 10 from downtown in an 88-59 homecoming win over Chowan Nov. 12, 2023 and nine more in a 77-64 loss at Presbyterian on Feb. 8, 2023.
The Lancers are 8-11 under Lang-Montgomery when they make at least five 3-pointers in a game.
MOVIN' ON UP
Last season's director of basketball operations and Player Development Rachel Balzer earned a promotion to assistant coach in late April. Balzer came to Farmville prior to the 2023-24 after graduating from George Mason in 2023.
BACK TO WHERE IT BEGAN
The Lancers will take a trip to Gainesville, Fla., on Dec. 15 to clash with the Florida Gators. The matchup represents a homecoming for head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery, a 1995 Florida graduate and 1989 SEC All-Freshman Team selection.Â
Following her time as head coach at Flagler, Lang-Montgomery returned to Florida as an assistant coach from 2019-22 on the staffs of Cam Newbauer (2019-21) and Kelly Rae Finley (2021-22), respectively.
ANOTHER GATOR
Jumping into Rachel Balzer's vacated director of basketball operations role for the 2024-25 season is two-time Florida graduate Jazmyn Simmons.
Simmons spent the last two seasons as a graduate assistant for the Gators after being a student manager since 2019. She provided support for UF women's basketball squads that advanced to the postseason four times, including the 2022 NCAA tournament and WNIT in both 2023 and 2021.
Simmons holds a bachelor's in health science (2022) and master's in sport management (2024) from Florida.
HUDSON JOINS AS GA
Rounding out the Lancers' 2024-25 coaching staff is graduate assistant coach Kristian Hudson.
A native of Birmingham, Ala., Hudson appeared in 114 games over five seasons at FIU (2015-18) and Nebraska (2018-20), accumulating 1,109 points and 400 assists.
Hudson graduated FIU in three years with a degree in psychology before transferring to play for the Cornhuskers. She appeared in the first seven games of 2018-19 prior to sustaining a season-ending injury.
Hudson was part of the WBCA's "So You Want to be a Coach" class, an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar, a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and an Academic All-Big Ten honoree, all in 2020.
She also was a four-time selection to the Nebraska Scholar-Athlete Honor Roll and named to the Tom Osborne Citizenship Team in both 2019 and 2020.
BENCH PRODUCTION
Longwood outscored the opponent bench in 13 games in 2023-24 and has done so in all four games this season. The Lancers posted an overwhelming 43-7 advantage in the category in the Nov. 7 71-62 loss at Norfolk State with the help of a team-leading 20-point effort from graduate guard Kiki McInytre, who was the Lancers' first substitute in the game.
Longwood continued the trend with a 60-6 edge from its reserves as the Lancers drubbed Hood, 102-21, on last Sunday. LU had a 28-25 lead in bench points at American Wednesday.
Longwood is averaging 39.5 bench points per game in 2024-25, good for 11th in NCAA Division I and first in the Big South.
BAND OF THIEVES
Longwood made 16 steals in its 59-41 victory at American Wednesday. It was the ninth time under Erika Lang-Montgomery that the team had at least 15 steals in a game. The Lancers are 8-1 in those contests. Longwood is averaging 15.8 steals per game this year, which is currently 16th in the NCAA.
Individually, Malea Brown is sixth in the nation with 14 total steals, while Kiki McInytre is 18th with 12.
Longwood led the Big South and finished 21st in the country in steals per game at 10.7 last season. McIntyre led the league at 2.77 per game, good for 20th in the NCAA, while she collected 83 total steals, which also led the league and was 29th in the country.
WINNING THE FIRST ONE
The Lancers' season-opening 81-70 win against Lincoln (Pa.) on Nov. 4 at the Joan Perry Brock Center marked Longwood's first victory to begin a season since defeating Campbell, 71-48, in the Lancer Classic at Willett Hall on Nov. 12, 2010.
