Longwood University’s men’s basketball team had the champ on the mat Saturday afternoon. Host Radford University just refused to stay down, a Longwood athletics press release highlighted.

Officials noted in the release that the reigning Big South champion Highlanders withstood hit after hit from the upset-minded Lancers and rode a game-high 24 points from Carlik Jones to a 71-64 comeback win in the Big South opener.

Longwood held the lead for the first 36 minutes of the game and built as large as a 12-point advantage in the second half, the release cited. But the Highlanders, 9-6 with the win, withstood the Lancers’ knockout blows and mounted a 31-12 run over the game’s final 10 minutes. That run erased Longwood’s lead for good with three minutes, 56 seconds to play and sent Radford to its eighth straight win over a Big South opponent.

“We really executed poorly there at the end,” Lancers Head Coach Griff Aldrich said in the release. “We were sloppy defensively, missed several of our tags on the roll-man. We were blowing our gaps and left guys open. We didn’t front the post and just let them throw it right in there. … Then offensively in the second half, other than a few possessions, we were really out of sync.”

Redshirt senior guard Isaiah Walton led Longwood with 14 points.

The Lancers (10-6) host UNC Asheville on Thursday at 7 p.m.