Wednesday afternoon, the Big South Conference released the full conference schedule for men’s basketball, featuring a 16-game slate.

Now, the Longwood Lancers know the next steps in their journey for 2023-24 following the release of the team’s non-conference schedule two weeks ago.

Longwood will tackle a schedule that features eight home Big South games in the Joan Perry Brock Center in addition to eight road trips. The Lancers will face each team in the league twice in a double round-robin setup.

The Big South schedule will see the Lancers open up at Winthrop to start 2024 on January 3 before returning home for back-to-back matchups with Charleston Southern (January 6) and in-state rival Radford (January 10).

As a part of the schedule, the longest conference road trip is two games, which Longwood will do three times. The Lancers also have a trio of two-game homestands and a pair of bye dates.

The regular season schedule concludes with a home date against High Point on March 2. 

The overall Big South Conference’s 72-game slate begins on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024 and is a 16-game, double round-robin schedule to determine the 2023-24 regular-season champion.

Full Big South schedule:

• At Winthrop | January 3
• Vs. Charleston Southern | January 6
• Vs. Radford | January 10
• At UNC Asheville | January 13
• At USC Upstate | January 17
• Vs. Presbyterian | January 20
• Vs. Gardner-Webb | January 24
• At High Point | January 31
• At Charleston Southern | February 3
• Vs. USC Upstate | February 7
• Vs. Winthrop | February 10
• At Presbyterian | February 17
• Vs. UNC Asheville | February 21
• At Radford | February 24
• At Gardner-Webb | February 28
• Vs. High Point | March 2

‘A taste of what’s to come’

The Lancers got a taste of what the season would bring last month. With so many new players on the team, Coach Griff Aldrich felt some bonding time was needed in order to build team chemistry. Thanks to a group of donors, the Lancers took advantage of an NCAA rule that lets teams take summer tours once every four years and headed to Europe, stopping first in England and then playing three games in France. 

“These trips are really valuable, especially when you’re bringing so many new guys together,” Aldrich said. “On our roster, we’re gonna have basically 10 new members of the team. There’s a lot of chemistry that needs to be developed and built.”

Spending 10 days with each other helped achieve that, Aldrich said. Winning three games against European talent didn’t hurt either.
Now Aldrich feels it’s hard to judge preseason scrimmages. On the one hand, the Lancers won all three of their games in France, with two of them not even remotely close. But on the other, it’s still preseason, with new faces still learning the gameplans.
“I think one of the things we’re trying to determine is what specifically can you take away, because basically several of the contests were pretty lopsided,” Aldrich said. “You don’t want to read too much into it but you also don’t want to ignore anything positive or negative. One has to be kind of careful when evaluating these exhibitions in August. But we learned a lot about our players.”

When will single tickets be released?

With the schedule out, you can buy season tickets for this year. The cost is $100, and the price includes admission and a reserved, padded seat to every home men’s and women’s basketball game. To purchase season tickets, head to go.longwood.edu/seasontickets. Longwood officials said added fan enhancements are also available. And to answer a much asked question, no, you can’t buy single game tickets yet. According to Longwood officials, single-game tickets will go on sale later in the fall, but there’s not an exact date yet.