Starting the season with two tough defeats away from home is not easy. However, the Longwood women’s basketball team showed excellent resilience in coming back from adversity and they looked confident and in control. In their first-ever game at the Joan Perry Brock Center, Longwood would go up against Chowan University following two losses on the road against American and Delaware – winning by a comfortable margin. Longwood would get production from almost all of their players and would capitalize on Chowan’s many mistakes.
Longwood would focus on getting shots up early, and both sides were playing at a very high tempo. It was almost like watching a tennis match, if you were in the middle of the longer side of the stands, your head was going back and forth. This is where the difference in the two teams’ quality started to show.
Chowan struggled heavily holding onto the ball. They had given up a whopping 20 points coming off turnovers at halftime. They would end the game with 29 turnovers in total. After the game was over, Head Coach Erika Lang-Montgomery stated that forcing turnovers was, “definitely part of our defensive philosophy…once we get the ball we push in transition and I was glad to see us do that today.”
After halftime, Longwood would put their foot on the gas and seal the comfortable win at the score of 88-59. Despite the high tempo and frequent transition offense Longwood was running, the team was very efficient from three-point range. Longwood went 10-23 from beyond the line with Bailey Williams going perfect from deep, making all five of her attempts. Shooting Guard Malea Brown dropped 20 points and went 7-for-11 from the field, and subsequently she was named player of the game.
When taking a look at the upcoming schedule for women’s basketball, the Lancers do not have a home game until December 20. This prompted a question that was given to Brown, arguably the best player on the court on Sunday. Due to the dominant nature of their performance
on Sunday against Chowan, and the fact that they had seven consecutive away games, it is fair to be curious about how the team was going to cope with that. Brown said, “We have to take our energy on the road [with us] so we can come out on top. We’re going to need energy whether we’re up or down.”
The best thing that a team can do after losing two opening games is to come home and dominate. To show everyone what the team has up their sleeves in a satisfying win looked good from a fan’s perspective. The Lancers women’s basketball team has a tough season ahead of them, but now that we saw them put on a display like they did against Chowan University, we know they have the pieces to string together some more wins.
