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The Rotunda
Friday, February 21, 2025

Men’s Basketball Hosts VMI Tonight, Greek Night as Well

Tonight, Longwood will host their first-ever in-state Big South game at 7 p.m., as the Keydets of Virginia Military Institute (VMI) come to Farmville from Lexington.

VMI (10-10, 5-3 Big South) is led by senior forward Stan Okoye, who garnered Pre-season Player of the Year honors at the Big South’s annual Media Day in October. Okoye is averaging a conference-high 20.4 points a game along with 9.1 rebounds a night. 

The Keydets are also coming off of a 70-69 win over Radford on the road a week ago, a game that ended a three- game slide for VMI. Okoye scored the game-win- ning tip-in with four seconds to go, a basket that completed a comeback from six points down with 51 seconds left. The Keydets also possess a po- tent offense, averaging a conference- high 77.6 points a game as a team. They rank second-to-last in the conference in scoring defense, though, giving up 75.3 points per game.

Longwood, on the other hand, is led by junior guard Tristan Carey with 14.6 points and five rebounds a game. Freshman phenom Michael Kessens has 12.5 points a game and trails only Okoye for the Big South rebounding lead, with 8.7 a game.

The Lancers (3-20, 0-9 Big South) rank last in both the conference and the nation in terms of scoring defense (81.9) and are 10th in the conference in points scored per game at 65.5. LU is in the midst of a 13-game losing streak that dates back to Dec. 17

“It’s a big game ... There should be a lot of energy [in Willett Hall],” said 10th-year Longwood head coach Mike Gillian on Tuesday. “[Okoye] is very talented. He’s really good; we’ve played against him before and have some familiarity with what he does and what some of their other guys do. We have to be ready for him.”

It is also Longwood’s annual Greek Night, where members of campus fraternities and sororities gather in Willett Hall to support the Lancers; it also marks the men’s basketball portion of the athletic department’s “LancerStrong” promotion, where every varsity-level team attends the game as just that, a team.