This past week, the women’s basketball team fell to the High Point Panthers and the Liberty Flames for the second time this season. Despite both losses, the Lancers (9-15, 6-7 Big South) will have to quickly recover for their next tough home game against Radford on Thursday Feb. 14. Both of these losses continued Longwood’s six-game losing streak.
Last Thursday, the team played the Panthers. With hundreds in attendance, the game got off to an intense start and by middle of the first half the Lancers were playing with a lot of energy despite trailing the Panthers. Longwood stuggled to match the oversized Panthers, but still managed to keep the score close and by the end of the first half, they were only down 35-32. With senior Erin Neal leading the team in scoring during the first half with nine points, the Lancers finished the half strong.
The second half of the game against High Point started with tight outside defense by the Lancers, leaving room for the Panthers to up their score with multiple drives to the basket and inside shots.
Rebounding also remained tough because of the uneven match in size against High Point, but the Lancers managed well, but again, the major height difference made it hard to defend mid-range shots attempted by High Point. Throughout the game — particularly the middle of the second half — the Lancers started to find themselves in trouble defensively trying to contain High Point’s star player
Cheyenne Parker. With only about seven minutes left, the Lancers continued to keep the momentum going, but were eventually defeated by High Point 79-72.
Second-year head coach Bill Reinson said, “I thought the High Point game may have been our best effort of the season. All of the ladies played ex- tremely hard and followed the game plan very well. We just ran into a situation where an outstanding player, Cheyenne Parker, had a terrific game and we couldn’t overcome her performance.”
The second home game of the week took place on Saturday against the Liberty Flames. Even with a more even difference in size than they dealt with against High Point, the Lancers fell behind early in the first half. Starting off missing many shots and layups, it was hard for the Lancers to stay motivated and they were found playing surprisingly slow defense. With rare appearances at the free throw line, the women took advantage of each opportunity, shooting 61 percent from the line. To finish off the first half of the game, Mieke Elkington hit a huge three-pointer to bring life back to the Lancers for the second half. However, at the end of the first half, the Lancers trailed 48-24.
The second half started out exciting, and Long- wood began making a majority of their shots, scoring eight points in two minutes and playing tighter defense. Although they improved in these areas, they continued to allow the Flames to get easy layups. Even being down 63-32, the Lancers fought hard throughout the game and Elkington continued to hit big shots for the Lancers. The game concluded with Longwood falling to Liberty 97-56. This week, Radford will come to Willett Hall on Thursday to play the Lancers. Longwood lost 57-49 their first time around against the Highlanders, but with the Lancers needing a big win and playing on their home court, anything could happen.
When asked how the team could improve for the Radford game, Reinson stated, “I think our com- mitment to defense needs to improve for the Radford game. We must be able to focus on our game plan similar to the way we did against High Point in order to be effective on the defensive end. Most of our practice time this week will be in this area.”
The Women's Basketball team comes together before taking on High Point panthers at Thursday's game.
