Miles Bowman and Haiishen McIntyre scored 19 points each and keyed a late rally over the final 10 minutes that pushed No. 1 seed High Point to an 89-78 win over No. 8 seed Longwood in the quarterfinals of the Big South Championship Friday afternoon at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C.

UNC Asheville went on to win the tournament.

Longwood overcame a 17-point first-half deficit to tie the game at 56-56 with 10:04 to play, but the Panthers opened up a 13-3 run and held at least an eight-point lead the rest of the way.

High Point’s win is the program’s first in the Big South Championship since the 2012 tournament and snaps a Cinderella run for the Lancers (10-22), who had overcome double-digit deficits in back-to-back victories at Radford in the season finale and against Charleston Southern in the Big South Championship first round.

Playing as their highest seed since joining the Big South four years ago, Longwood was on pace to make it three wins in a row after overcoming a 19-2 hole in the first half, but High Point erased Longwood’s lone lead of the day, 56-55 with 10:21 to play, by hitting 20 of their last 23 free throws and scoring on nine of their final 10 possessions.

”Our team was resilient, but I just thought mental fatigue was probably the bigger answer for today more than anything,” said Longwood head coach Jayson Gee, who has led Longwood to a 3-2 record in the Big South Tournament over the past two seasons.

“Obviously High Point’s defense just didn’t let us score, but I’m very, very proud of our guys and the way they fought under these conditions.”

Longwood was playing its second game in less than 24 hours after surging to a 75-69 win over ninth-seeded Charleston Southern in Thursday’s first round.

That game, like Friday against High Point, opened with a sluggish start from the Lancers, who fell behind by 12 points before mounting another

double-digit comeback to advance to their second straight quarterfinals.

Thursday’s double-digit comeback was the second straight for the Lancers, but High Point blocked it from becoming a three-game run on the strength of solid free throw shooting and defense down the stretch. After reclaiming a 63-59 lead, the Panthers forced Longwood into three straight empty possessions during a nearly two-minute span in which they inflated their four-point lead to 69-59 with 5:24 to play.

Longwood senior Shaquille Johnson cut the lead back to single digits with a pull-up jumper with 5:15 to play, but McIntyre hit back-to-back free throws to reclaim a double-digit lead that never fell below nine the rest of the way.

High Point scored their final 10 points from the free throw line, yielding at least one point from nine of their final 10 possessions.

“To deal with the adversity they dealt with deserves a lot of credit,” Gee said of the Panthers. “I thought they were outstanding and resilient. That’s a term we’ve been using to describe ourselves, but today it was High Point.”

High Point moves on to Friday’s semifinals where they will face No. 4 seed UNC Asheville, who defeated No. 5 seed Liberty 80-49.

Johnson and senior Lotanna Nwogbo both recorded 20-point double-doubles in their final games as Lancers. Johnson erupted for 28 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and two steals for the second-highest scoring performance in Longwood’s Big South postseason history. Nwogbo turned in 24 points, 12 boards and a pair of blocks for the fourth-highest scoring game and the third-highest rebounding game on Longwood’s Big South Championship lists.

High Point had five players score in double figures, including Anthony Lindauer and Austin White’s 14 points and Lorenzo Cugini’s 10. Those performances came in the absence of Big South Player of the Year John Brown and senior guard Adam Weary, who suffered a knee injury six minutes in and did not return.

The loss puts an end to college careers of Longwood’s “Big Three” of Johnson, Nwogbo and Tra’Vaughn White. Those three were part of Gee’s first two recruiting classes and led the Lancers to back-to-back double-digit win seasons and the two highest in-conference win totals since the Lancers joined the Big South in 2012-13.

“Their sacrifice — you’ve seen them play, they can play anywhere in the country at any level – it just really warms my heart that they thought as highly of us as they did,” said Gee, reflecting on his signing of those three. “They certainly raised the profile of our program, and the way they performed is consistent with who they are. Not just the amount of points and rebounds they had, but they’ve really made some huge strides as people.

“I’m proud of Shaq, proud of Lotanna, proud of Tra’Vaughn, proud of what we have at Longwood and what we’re going to have in the future.”

Nwogbo, the first All-Big South first team pick in program history, recorded a league-high 14 double-doubles and led Longwood with 15.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, a school-record 58 dunks and a school Division I-record .591 (194-of-238) field goal percentage.

Johnson led Longwood in assists in both years in Farmville while posting two-year averages of 12.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.5 steals per game. His 4.5 assists as a senior ranked as the fourth-highest in school history despite playing the entire year as a forward.

White capped his lone season at Longwood with 14 double-figure scoring efforts in his final 16 games, including four 20-point efforts. He finished as the Big South leader in free throw percentage, hitting .851 (74-of-87) of his shots from the line to rank third on Longwood’s single-season list behind teammate Darrion Allen, who hit .879 (58-of-66) to rank second.

”You think about where we were when we got the program and where we are now, and the caliber of players we’re attracting,” Gee said, “it’s all because of their sacrifice. Without their sacrifice to come to Longwood before anyone came to Longwood, we wouldn’t be here. It certainly wasn’t a popular place, especially when they had the caliber of options they had.”

Longwood’s season ends with double-digit victories for the second straight year along with the program’s third Big South first-round victory. With High Point and UNC Asheville already punching their tickets to the Big South semifinals, No. 2 seed Winthrop faces No. 10 seed Presbyterian in game three of Friday’s quarterfinals, followed by No. 3 seed Coastal Carolina and No. 6 seed Gardner-Webb.