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 The Longwood women’s basketball is 5-0 in conference play for the first time in its Division I history.

The Lancers staved off a furious second-half comeback from homesteading High Point, knocking off the the Panthers, 72-68, at the Qubein Center, laying claim to their seventh consecutive victory.

“We won a game on the road against a very good High Point team,” Longwood head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery said. “I was really proud of the fight that our players showed down the stretch. We had some key stops late game. We worked really hard to get a [big] lead, unfortunately we didn’t hold onto it, but we got the stops when we needed them and we came out on top.”

After Nevaeh Zavala stripped Kiki McIntyre of the ball and found Dom Nesland for a layup to cut the Longwood lead to 69-66, with 90 seconds to play, McIntyre split a pair of free throws, extending the advantage to four. Lauren Scott then missed a jumper with 50 seconds left, but gathered her own rebound and went back up. Mariah Wilson, though, blocked that shot. Nesland, again, got her own rebound and again missed a putback. This time, Amor Harris cleared the boards and Wilson found Frances Ulysse up ahead for a layup for to seal the victory.

Longwood women’s basketball keeps climbing

Longwood, which placed four players in double figures, improved to 14-5 overall, remaining perfect in Big South action. The Lancers last were unbeaten through five conference games under legendary head coach Shirley Duncan in the 2000-01 season as members of the Division II Carolinas-Virginia Athletic Conference.

Longwood led by as many as 17 halfway through the third quarter and 12 with just over eight minutes to play, and had just enough to get past HPU (8-10, 3-2) to end a four-game skid versus the Panthers.

Ulysse scored a team-high 13 points with four rebounds in 19 minutes off the bench, while Wilson went for 12 points, four boards, three steals, two blocks and two assists.

Otaifo Esenabhalu tallied 11 points and nine rebounds and Malea Brown scored 10 with three assists and two steals. Jaci Bolden and Lili Booker chipped in seven and six points, respectively off the bench, as well.

High Point received a career-high 33 points, including 20 in the second half, from Zavala and also got 14 from Scott and 12 more by Nesland.

Longwood used a 6-0 spurt to take a 17-12 edge after the first quarter and opened 38-31 advantage at the break with the help of a late first-half 12-2 run.

“We stayed true to who we are defensively,” Lang-Montgomery said of building the lead in the second quarter. “That’s our identity. We pressured them, forced them into some turnovers and were able to capitalize off of them.”

Maintaining a lead in second half

The Lancers pushed the lead to 52-35 with 4:54 remaining in the third when McIntyre grabbed an offensive rebound and Brown knocked down a jumper. Ulysse stopped a quick six-point run with her second 3-pointer in a many games for a 55-41 score with two-and-a-half minutes left in the third.

Zavala later worked the deficit to single digits at 55-47 on a second-chance bucket with a minute to play, but Esenabhalu with a jumper to restore a 10-point lead heading into the final quarter. A basket inside from Ulysse with 8:18 pushed the lead to 61-49. HPU, however, kept coming, rallying to within 63-58 on a Jaleesa Lawrence trey with less than six minutes remaining.

Zavala got her team to within 67-64 with 2:31 left following a Panthers’ timeout, but Ulysse responded with another bucket in the paint off of a Brown assist to make it 69-64 with 2:20 on the clock. Longwood shot 46 percent from the field, got 23 points off turnovers, 44 points in the paint and 23 from the bench in the win.

When will Lancers play again?

Longwood women’s basketball is back in action next Wednesday, Jan. 22, hosting Radford at the Joan Perry Brock Center. Tip time is 7 p.m.