Meet This March's Cinderella
Both the men and women’s Longwood Lancers qualified for the NCAA Tournament—the first in school history.
Last Monday, in a mining town smack in the center of Virginia, there was a scene that felt straight out of a movie. Two buses approached town, filled with the women’s and men’s basketball teams of Longwood University. The night before, just hours apart and on the same court, they had each won the Big South Conference Championship. Now, as they returned home to Farmville, Virginia, they were told there was about to be a parade—for them. But the players didn’t believe it.
“We were actually joking, we were like ‘No one’s going to be here. Everyone’s going to be home,’” said Lancers guard Kyla McMakin. After all, it was scheduled for the middle of the workday.
But Lancers fans came anyway. On Main Street, many of the town’s 8,000 or so residents cheered and held signs. “So proud!” they had written. “WELCOME HOME CHAMPS!” They tied blue and white balloons to street posts, double knotted so they wouldn’t blow away in the gusting wind. The basketball players walked next to each other in the middle of it all, the men and the women’s teams of Longwood University, each holding a championship trophy.
March has only just begun. But we’ve already been introduced to Cinderella.
Neither the men’s nor women’s basketball programs at Longwood, a public school founded in 1860 that now has an enrollment of about 5,000 students, have ever made the NCAA Tournament. This year, both Lancers teams will finally take part. It’s a feat that would have seemed impossible four years ago, on the afternoon when the hires of both men’s coach Griff Aldrich and women’s coach Rebecca Tillett were announced on the same day. Back then, the Lancers were a laughingstock; the last winning season either program had was in 2008, when the men went a shaky 17-14. But those two coaches, each with their own improbable path to this unlikely place, had lofty ambitions. Their offices were down the hall from each other. They swapped notes. And soon, both teams started to win.
Let’s start with Aldrich’s story. He played Division III basketball at a school near Longwood, then gave up the sport for law school at UVA. He couldn’t totally quit hoops, though, and coached at a Charlottesville prep school in between classes. Then, life happened. Basketball was nothing but a boy’s dream. A high-profile Houston law practice offered him a job, and he moved to Texas, climbing the corporate ladder. Soon, he was the CFO for a venture capital firm—making $800,000 annually.
And then…Aldrich quit. It was 2016. His college friend, Ryan Odom, had been hired at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Aldrich called to ask if there were any spots left on the staff; he still wanted to give the basketball dream a shot. Odom thought Aldrich was joking. There was one spot left, the director of basketball operations, and it paid $32,000 a year. Surely Aldrich wouldn’t leave his high paying job in Houston for that?
It wasn’t long before Aldrich, his wife, and two kids were packing their bags for Baltimore. Two years later, he was on the sideline when UMBC made history as the first 16 seed to beat a 1 seed at the NCAA Tournament. Just a few weeks later, Longwood called Aldrich to offer him the job. His teams struggled at first, but on Sunday, they crushed Winthrop 79-58 for a conference championship. “A couple years ago, if we lost to them by single digits, that was a win,” Aldrich said. “I’m not sure the whole thing has hit me yet.”
On the women’s side, Tillet grew up a basketball player in Northern Virginia, born into a family of coaches. Her father is a high school soccer coach. Her brother coaches high school hoops. And so, after graduating from college, it wasn’t hard to figure out what she would do. Tillet returned to her high school alma mater and took over the women’s basketball team. She coached high school ball for 15 years—until Navy called.
The Midshipman had been recruiting Tillet’s players for years. Now, they wanted to recruit her too.
She was an assistant in Annapolis for four years before inheriting a Longwood team that was one of the worst in Division 1. She had to grind to convince players to join a program that hadn’t seen results in decades. “One of the things we say in the recruiting process is come dream your biggest dream, accomplish it, and then we're gonna push you to the next biggest dream,” said Tillett.
On Sunday, each team will learn who they face in the first round of the tournament. No matter who it is, the odds will be long, but isn’t that the Lancer way? They dreamt of winning a conference title, so now it’s onto the next biggest dream in the sport: to win a game in the tournament.
It is March, after all. Dreams tend to come true this time of year.
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