FARMVILLE, Va. -- Longwood begins its 106th season of wom
en's basketball on Wednesday hosting Randolph from the NCAA Division III Old Dominion Athletic Conference in a 7 p.m. tip at the Joan Perry Brock Center.
Head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery will not be on the sidelines Wednesday as she attends services for her mother-in-law, who recently passed. She is scheduled to return for Saturday's game against Western Kentucky.
STORYLINES
▪ The Lancers return nine players and welcome five newcomers for fourth-year head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery and staff.
▪ The Lancers are 9-0 all-time against Randolph with the last meeting between the teams coming in the 1975-76 season. Longwood won that one, 80-53.
▪ The Lancers are coming off of a 22-12 season, tying for the best record in their Division I era. Longwood earned its third selection to postseason at Division I, playing at Duquesne
in the WNIT
.
▪ Erika Lang-Montgomery was named Big South Coach of the Year, a year ago, becoming the first in program history to earn the honor.
▪ Junior guard Amor Harris and graduate student guard Malea Brown were named to the preseason all-Big South team, with Harris claiming first team honors and Brown picking up second team plaudits. Harris scored 11 points per game in a breakout sophomore campaign while Brown averaged 9.4 points and 2.5 steals.
▪ Also back in the front court is Otaifo Esenabhalu, who had 7.8 points and 8.2 rebounds per game last season. Esenabhalu corralled 280 rebounds as a sophomore, the eighth most in a single season in Longwood history. The total was tops in the Big South Conference and 72nd overall in the country.
SCOUTING THE WILDCATS
Randolph went 12-14 overall and 7-9 in the ODAC, falling in the quarterfinals of the league tournament to Randolph-Macon. The Wildcats are led by first-year coach Polly Thomason, who has 350 wins as a head coach in 20 seasons. Thomason arrived at the Lynchburg school from Hartford where she led the Hawks for three seasons from 2022-25 in the transition from Division I to Division III.
Under former head man Steve Lanpher, Randolph averaged 57.3 points per game and shot 35.1 percent from the field in 2024-25. Randolph pulled down 35.6 rebounds per game. Wednesday's game is an exhibition for the Wildcats.
Randolph's top returning scorer averaged 4.7 points per game in 23 starts in her junior season.
LANCERS IN SEASON OPENERS
Longwood is 5-16 in season openers in its Division I history, which dates to the 2004-05 season.
The Lancers won their first three such openers, including defeating current Big South foe Winthrop, 76-45, on Nov. 19,2004 in the Lancer Invitational at Willett Hall.
Longwood began last season with a 81-70 victory over Division II Lincoln (Pa.) at the Joan Perry Brock Center. Four Lancers finished in double figures with Malea Brown scoring a game-high 21 points.
LANCERS SECOND IN BIG SOUTH POLL
Longwood was picked second in the 2025-26 Big South preseason poll, announced at the conference media day in Johnson City, Tenn., on Oct. 15. The Lancers earned 69 points in the balloting with one first-place vote to finish behind just High Point (77 points and six first place nods. Radford was picked third with 67 points and one first-place vote. The final vote for the top spot went to UNC Asheville, which was ninth overall with 22 total points.
It marks the first time in program history that the Lancers have earned a first-place vote in the Big South poll.
PACKING 'EM IN
Longwood led the Big South in attendance in 2024-25, averaging 1,183 fans per game over 15 home dates.
A total of 17,750 people came through the turnstiles at the Joan Perry Brock Center for the season, good for 148th most nationally across Division I women's basketball.
WELCOME TO PARADISE
Longwood will spend the Thanksgiving holiday at the 2025 Puerto Rico Clasico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, playing Buffalo and Stephen F. Austin on Nov. 27 and 29, respectively.
Buffalo finished 30-7 overall last season, winning the postseason WNIT. Stephen F. Austin went 29-6, winning the Southland Conference title to advance to the NCAA tournament. Both teams are receiving votes in the preseason mid-major top-25 poll with SFA getting 63 votes and Buffalo picking up nine.
NON-CON SUCCESS A YEAR AGO
Longwood went 9-5 in regular-season non-conference action in 2024-25. It marked the best out-of-conference record for the Lancers since Shirley Duncan's 1987-88 squad was 10-9 outside of Mason-Dixon Conference play. That team finished 14-13 overall.
HALL TO THE HALL
Former Longwood great Nikki Hall-Atkinson was announced as one of six part of the Longwood Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2025 on Oct. 7.
Hall-Atkinson played for four seasons and has her jersey number retired, as well. She led Longwood to a pair of CVAC titles and three trips to the Division II NCAA tournament. She also earned All-America honorable mention twice.
As a senior, she was the CVAC Player of the Year in 1997, and she was named to the CVAC All-Time Team.
Hall-Atkinson finished her career with 1,499 career points which is currently fifth all-time at Longwood.
Hall-Atkinson took over on the bench for Shirley Duncan during the 2005-06 season.
She is also slated to call select games with Sam Hovan on ESPN+ this season, including Wednesday's contest against Randolph.
SUCCESS AT HOME
Head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery helped the Lancers to a 10-5 record at the Joan Perry Brock Center in 2024-25. It was Longwood's best record at home since the 2020-21 Lancers went 11-3 at Willett Hall under Rebecca Tillett and were selected to compete in the Women's Basketball Invitational after finishing 14-11 overall.
The Lancers are set to play another 15 games at home this season, including seven in non-conference action. Among those, Longwood welcomes Western Kentucky of the Sun Belt Conference Nov. 8, George Washington Nov. 17 and Troy Dec. 3. The Trojans are ranked No. 21 in the preseason mid-major top 25 poll.
LOCKED IN THROUGH 2030-31
Following the Lancers' Big South championship game appearance, trip to the postseason WNIT and 22-win season, head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery signed a six-year contract extension that will keep her in Farmville through the 2030-31 season.
Lang-Montgomery and staff coached the Big South Defensive Player of the Year in Kiki McIntyre, who set the Longwood and Big South single-season record for steals (130), and led one of the most smothering defensive units in the country, which forced 27.47 turnovers per game, good for second in the NCAA. All that helped Longwood to a 13-win improvement from 2023-24.
WALKING REBOUND
Junior forward Otaifo Esenabhalu enters her third season with the Lancers tied for 10th all-time in Longwood women's basketball history in career rebounding average at 7.6 boards per game. Esenabhalu is currently tied with Salene Green, who played 98 games at Longwood from 1988-92.
Esenabhalu has 18 double-digit rebound games in her career and the Lancers have gone 12-6 in those contests.
MALEA STEALS
Back for her third season in Farmville, graduate student guard Malea Brown posted 83 steals in 2024-25, representing the eighth-most steals in a single season in Longwood history.
In 64 games at Longwood, Brown, who was selected to the preseason all-Big South second team this season, has 143 career steals.
SMARTY PANTS
One of the cornerstones of the Longwood women's basketball program under head Erika Lang-Montgomery is academic success and 2024-25 was no different.
Eleven of the 13 players on last year's roster earned a spot of the Big South Presidential Honor Roll by registering a 3.0 GPA or better for the academic year. Earning the honor were: Montgomery Bedford, Jaci Bolden, Lili Booker, Olivia Bowes, Malea Brown, Otaifo Esenabhalu, Amor Harris, Kiki McIntyre, JaMya Robinson, Nalani Simmons and Frances Ulysse.
