In Farmville, Virginia, the Longwood Lancers spent decades as college basketball's lovable afterthought — and then, in the span of a few years, became the Big South's team to beat. Two conference tournament titles in three seasons, two NCAA Tournament trips, a sparkling new arena, and a program motto — 'On the Rise' — that turned out to be a promise. Now Ronnie Thomas enters his second season as head coach with a retooled roster and the same expectation: contend for the Big South crown.
Thomas was promoted in March 2025 after Griff Aldrich departed to become associate head coach at Virginia, ending a seven-year run in which Aldrich went 127-100 and took the Lancers places they'd never been. Thomas, a longtime assistant who helped build the championship culture, kept the program steady in year one: 16-16 overall, 8-8 in the Big South — a .500 season that was really a bridge year, holding the foundation while the roster turned over.
The breakthrough that changed everything came in 2022. Longwood went 26-5 with a 15-1 Big South record — the best season in program history — swept the regular-season and tournament titles, and earned the program's first-ever NCAA Tournament bid. The Lancers drew Tennessee in the opening round as a 14 seed, and while the run ended there, Farmville had its moment: a program that had once gone 42-120 over five dark years under Jayson Gee was dancing.
They did it again in 2024. Longwood captured its second Big South tournament championship in three seasons and returned to the NCAA Tournament, this time drawing Houston in the first round. Two titles in three years — the mark of a program, not a fluke. The Lancers had become the team the rest of the Big South measured itself against.
The Aldrich era built all of it. Hired in March 2018, the Hampden-Sydney graduate and Tidewater native installed 'On the Rise' as the program's calling card and then made it real: CBI invitations in 2019 and 2021, back-to-back top-five Big South finishes, and the winningest three-year stretch of the Division I era before the titles arrived. When Virginia came calling, he left a program unrecognizable from the one he inherited.
The building matches the ambition. The Joan Perry Brock Center opened in November 2023 — a 3,000-seat, state-of-the-art home that replaced the aging Willett Hall and gave the program a recruiting showpiece. On big nights, the Lancer Lunatics pack the student section and the Brock Center feels like the future of Big South basketball: intimate, loud, and built for a program that expects to win.
Thomas' second season brings a retooled roster: ten newcomers join five returners, including four-year Lancer Jaylen Benard — the program's continuity piece and cultural anchor. The staff went international in a big way, signing five players from overseas. Headlining the class is 6-foot-10 Lithuanian forward Domas Kauzonas, a transfer from UNC Greensboro who played 66 games over three seasons, shot better than 56 percent from the floor, and started six times last year while helping UNCG to the Southern Conference semifinals. Estonian guard Jorke Aav, 6-foot-1, arrives after playing in Germany's top division with Gladiators Trier and starring for Estonia's U20 national team — he averaged around 12 points at U20 EuroBasket with a 23-point outburst against Georgia.
The backcourt adds more proven pieces. TJ Robinson, a 6-foot-4 sophomore from New Jersey, transferred from Saint Peter's, where he averaged just under 10 points per game off the bench as a former three-star recruit and state champion at Montclair Immaculate Conception. Freshman Elijah Thomas, a 6-foot-5 scoring guard from Toronto, brings high school bucket-getting pedigree. It's a roster built on length, shooting and international experience — a distinctly modern mid-major construction.
The staff got a makeover too. Associate head coaches Marty McGillan and Tom Palombo departed, and Thomas brought in Larry Blunt as associate head coach along with assistants Odri Dedolli, Emmanuel Matey, Brett Gilbert — and a familiar face in Donovan Williams, who returns to Farmville after helping engineer the 2022 championship run and subsequent stops at Oral Roberts and South Florida. Williams was instrumental in the 26-win 2022 season; his return is a direct line back to the program's peak.
The deeper history gives the rise its texture. Longwood's first season was 1976-77; the program reached the Division III Final Four in 1980 and the Division II Sweet 16 in 1994, won the CVAC tournament in 2001, and joined the Big South in 2012 after a long Division I transition. The all-time record sits at 665-762 — a ledger that the last decade has been steadily repairing, one winning season at a time.
Two Big South titles in five seasons. A new arena. A second-year coach with championship DNA on his staff and a roster rebuilt for the modern game. The 2026-27 hunt for a third Big South crown starts now — and in Farmville, 'On the Rise' isn't nostalgia. It's the plan.