The Longwood men’s basketball team will suit up for the final game of their regular season in front of a sold-out crowd against the Radford Highlanders on February 28. The game will tip off at 3 p.m.
The Lancers come off a double overtime win against Charleston Southern, led by guards Jacoi Hutchinson and Redd Thompson Jr. The two Lancers finished with 36 and 22 points respectively, final score 107-96. The win tied their overall record to 15-15 and put their conference record to 7-8, placing them fifth in the Big South standings.
Meanwhile, Radford comes off a dominant win against USC Upstate, 71-59. Radford guard Lukas Walls led the way with 16 points. Radford sits third in the Big South with an overall record of 16-14 and a conference record of 9-6.
The final game of the season will mark the first complete season under Head Coach Ronnie Thomas, as tournament play begins a week after on March 4.
“It’s a one game season,” Thomas said to The Rotunda ahead of their matchup against Radford. “That’s how we’re looking at it — just focusing on that and understanding the sacrifice has to be so much more important for the team. Just drill that message in and make them understand that’s how [we’re] going to win .”
In the month of February, five of the six games have ended with a margin of 11 points or less. “The beauty is that we’ve been in [close games] and we know what it takes to win them, and we also know what we’ve done to lose them”, Thomas said.
In that stretch, five Lancers have scored 20+ points across the six games played, including Redshirt junior guard Alphonzo “Fats” Billups III, who scored 20 against UNC Asheville and set a career-high 25 versus USC Upstate. Longwood has gone 3-3 in that span.
Billups said, “When things [aren’t] going the best and things [aren’t] going right — just keep talking to the guys, just always be a leader to the guys and to myself too.”
The last time these two teams met was at the Dedmon Center at Radford, where the Lancers found themselves down 17 to the Highlanders at the half. They made an eventual comeback that didn’t have enough juice and lost by two points, final score 83-85.
Radford Guard Del Jones scored a game-high 25 points. Off the bench for Longwood, Thompson poured in 22 points despite the loss.
In front of the sold out crowd in the Joan Perry Brock Center, the Lancers want to bring their all into the final game of the season.
Thomas said, “You got one game left in your season, you got to play like you want it. We got four seniors we can send off right, [we] get to play in front of our fans and community. Trying to go off right here in JPB.”
Longwood has a chance to give themselves a winning record to end the season and to give them the most conference wins in a season since 2022-23. The game will be streaming live on ESPN+.
