Longwood women make it 20 wins with Triumph at Winthrop

Published 5:55 am Thursday, February 27, 2025

The victory — the Lancers’ fourth consecutive — improves Longwood to 20-9 overall and 11-4 in the Big South Conference and marks the second time in the school’s Division I era it has reached 20 wins. LU joins the 2021-22 Big South championship squad as the only two to do it at the top level of NCAA competition while becoming just the eighth team in the last 56 seasons of Longwood women’s basketball to accomplish the feat.

“I’m really excited that our team has put together a solid season and we still have games to go,” Longwood head coach Erika Lang-Montgomery said. “I think this team is on a mission to play some good basketball and in the days to come.”

Leading by just two, 29-27, at the break, the Lancers outscored Winthrop 14-9 in the third quarter, keeping the Eagles off the scoreboard for nearly all of the final five minutes of the period to open a 43-36 edge. Longwood then expanded the lead early in the fourth, scoring the first five points of that frame for its largest lead of the night at 48-36 with 8:11 to play.

“I knew we had kind of gone back and forth over the course of the game,” Lang-Montgomery said. “We go on one and they go on one and so this is a tough place to play, a tough place to win. And so we just we stayed after it.

“We were able to turn them over and that gave us some momentum and then we had to make some big stops on the defensive end.”

Amourie Porter hit a jumper with 48 seconds left that made it a six-point game again. The Lancers, however, were solid from the foul line down the stretch to seal the win.

Amor Harris paced the Lancers with 15 points on 5-for-10 from the field and knocked down a team-best five of Longwood’s 18 free throws.

“The big thing is the free throws,” Lang-Montgomery said. “When you look at the box score, it was us being able to step up to the free-throw line and shoot 75 percent for the game. That’s what kept our lead, going into the half because we didn’t shoot the ball well in the second quarter, but we were able to go 5-for-6 on the free-throw line and that helped us hold on to that lead.”

The Longwood women shot 41 percent from the field and turned Winthrop over 18 times, converting the miscues into 19 points

Kiki McIntyre scored 11 points, adding three assists and two steals, while Malea Brown tallied eight points, four rebounds and two steals.

“We want to finish the season strong. It’s a home game. It’s senior night,” Lang-Montgomery said. “We want to send our seniors out with a win at home. And so we’re going to do everything to try to make that happen.”