Longwood at Saint Joseph’s
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
7:00 PM ET, Michael J. Hagan ’85 Arena
Saint Joseph’s is a 9.5-point favorite over Longwood with the total at 149.5. My play is Under 149.5.
Longwood dropped 123 points on Monday night, and that number is going to lure some people into the Over. Ignore it. The opponent was Division III Pfeiffer, which coughed it up 27 times and watched the Lancers score 82 points in the paint. Wednesday’s opponent is a different animal: a Saint Joseph’s team that built its whole identity last season on making people miserable.
The Hawks’ defense is the headline, not a footnote. Steve Donahue took over on short notice in September 2025, when Billy Lange left for a job with the Knicks, and turned the Hawks into a 24-win NIT quarterfinalist mostly by guarding. From January 4 on, St. Joe’s allowed 98.2 points per 100 possessions, 24th in the country, while the national average sat at 109.3. The two guards who drove that are both back. Jaiden Glover-Toscano is a preseason first-team All-A10 pick, and Austin Williford was on the all-rookie team. “Austin and Jaiden are to me the two best defensive guards in the league,” Donahue said in the Atlantic 10’s season preview.
The rotation around them got nastier, too. Sean Logan comes over from Davidson after leading the A10 in blocks (2.4 per game). Logan Carey arrives from Maine with 50 steals last season and an America East All-Defensive Team nod. He’s also seen Longwood before: 13 points and four steals against the Lancers last November.
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Scoring is the question mark on Hawk Hill. Five of the Hawks’ top seven scorers are gone, including Derek Simpson (13.8 points and 5.2 assists a night). This team also shot just 30.8% from three last season, and Donahue’s answer is a batch of transfers plus freshman shooter BJ Ranson. It’s opening night, and the new pieces have yet to play a real minute together. Season openers with this much turnover tend to look like a pickup game with referees for the first ten minutes.
Longwood plays right into that. The Lancers barely shoot threes. Last season they ranked 300th nationally in three-point attempts. They live in the paint and at the free-throw line, and they gave the ball away 13.8 times a game, 342nd in Division I. Driving into a 6-11 shot-blocker with two ball hawks at the point of attack is not a recipe for 75 points. Ronnie Thomas brought in 10 newcomers in his second year, and Monday’s game told us nothing about how they handle real resistance.
The efficiency numbers agree. Bart Torvik’s early ratings, which still lean heavily on preseason projections, have St. Joe’s as a top-65 defense and both offenses in the bottom half of Division I. Run those numbers at a normal pace and you land in the mid-140s. The market has already slid from 151.5 to 149.5, and I think it has further to go.
Where this goes sideways
Longwood lives at the line. The Lancers ranked 42nd nationally with 23.3 free-throw attempts a game last year, and a whistle-happy crew could hand both teams cheap points. Both teams also played around 68 possessions a game last season, so if the Hawks’ new guards start running and the threes finally fall, a 20-point blowout could sneak over by itself. There’s no injury report yet, so keep an eye on the starting lineups before tip.
Projected score: Saint Joseph’s 75, Longwood 67
The Pick: Under 149.5 (-112)
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