Josh Carpenter
Sports Editor
Behind a season-high 17 points from senior point guard Dijuan Harris and 10 points off the bench for junior Phil Jones, the Charlotte 49ers men’s basketball team won convincingly over ECU Wednesday night, 80-68.
In just 32 minutes of game action, Harris turned in his most productive game of the season, scoring 17 points, dishing out six assists and shooting a respectable 80 percent from the foul line.
“This game was a good game, we won. But we need to go watch some tape,” Harris said following the 80-68 win. “We need to work on the mistakes we made. Now it’s time to look ahead to Saturday against Louisville. We have a big game that we have to prepare for.”
The win improved Charlotte to 5-1 on the young season and dropped road-weary East Carolina to 3-5. Charlotte won only 11 games last season, but this is a new season, and the 49ers are off to one of the best starts in team history under head coach Bobby Lutz.
“It’s a much better start than last year,” Harris said of the strong start. “We had a tough loss against Duke. We gotta just continue to get better though at the defensive end. We did get some stops tonight but we didn’t rebound particularly well tonight. We just have to go back to the lab.”
Charlotte forward Shamari Spears didn’t crack the 20-point mark for the first time this season but still came through with a solid effort, scoring 12 points while pulling down six rebounds in just his fifth game as a 49er.
The depth of the 49ers played a huge role in the eventual outcome against ECU as well. Charlotte had 10 different players score and outscored ECU’s bench 37-3. Jones led the bench attack with 10 points in just 21 minutes of play.
“I think some teams, we can wear down over the course of a 40 minute game,” 49ers head coach Bobby Lutz said of his team’s depth. “Everybody that came in did a good job. In my mind, they’re all starters and they’re all important. Against Louisville we could change it up. It just depends on the situation.”’
ECU’s Brock Young led all scorers with a season-high 24 points while the Pirates’ Chad Wynn had a game-high 10 rebounds.
Charlotte came out on fire shooting and led by as much as 18 near the end of the first half.The second half however, was a much different story.
In all, 47 personal fouls were called during the game and at times, the number of fouls being called seemed to dictate the pace of play. Charlotte pushed it’s lead to as many as 19 early in the second half, but the slow pace of play allowed the Pirates to pull to within seven with just under four minutes remaining. The 49ers closed out the game on a 10-5 scoring run to lock up another win and move the team to it’s best start since the 2000-01 season.
Bridget Landwehrmann
Staff Writer
Following the win against ECU, the 49ers traveled on the road and routed No. 18 Louisville in Freedom Hall, 87-65. Senior DiJuan Harris recorded a season-high seven assists, also scoring 12 points and one turnover.
This 22 point victory is the largest margin of victory head coach Bobby Lutz has had over a top 25 team, and it was the worst loss the Cardinal’s coach Rick Pitino has endured at Freedom Hall in nine years.
“Obviously this is a great win for us,” Lutz said of his 49ers who built a 15-point halftime lead, scored the first seven points of the second half and never allowed Louisville to get any closer than 14 in the second half. “Louisville was depleted with injuries and obviously they’ll be better when they get everyone healthy. I’m still unbelievably proud of our guys.
We have so many new guys, To come in and believe we can win was important. I told our guys, ‘don’t come out of the locker room if you don’t think we can win’. Everybody says the right things, but they believed and they played that way.”
Freshman Chris Braswell scored 21 points and pulled down 14 rebounds for his third double-double of the season for the 49ers (6-1).
Also making a big contribution were guards Derrio Green and Shammar Bowden. The duo combined to knock down seven 3-pointers before halftime to give Charlotte a 47-32 lead. After burying yet another long-range 3-pointer just before half, Green turned to the stunned Freedom Hall crowd and held up the “3 Point” sign as he raced back down the floor and into the locker room.
Green finished with a career-high 20 points while Bowden added 17 of his own to hand he Cardinal’s their worst loss since Denny Crum roamed the sidelines.
“We are always the underdog when we come in here,” said Lutz. “We’ve always shot the ball well when we come in here and our guys can shoot.”
The Cardinals had now answer to the 49ers hot backcourt shooting. Louisville was without injured guards Peyton Siva, Preston Kowles and Jerry Smith, and Charlotte made the Cardinals pay by dominating on the perimeter.
“They were just much better than us,” Pitino said. “They outplayed us in every phase of the game. It was just a very disappointing loss.”
The 49ers made 10 of 24 3-pointers, outrebounded Louisville 49-35 and had little to no trouble in weathering a second-half Louisville surge.
“It’s a great win for us,” Braswell said. “When we played Duke and lost, we got a feel of how to play in a hostile environment. Now we are kind of getting a feeling for each other and playing with each other.”
The win was he first over a ranked team since knocking off Xavier last February.
Charlotte returns home tonight to take on Winston Salem State in Halton Arena
Be the first to comment on this article!