No place like Halton: Charlotte 49ers basketball keeps rolling at home
The Charlotte 49ers have found a fortress at Halton Arena, where they’ve been as good as ever this season.
After beating Texas-San Antonio 91-84 on Saturday, the 49ers have won nine consecutive games and are 12-1 at home this season, which ties a program record for victories at Halton (2004-05, 2007-08 and 2012-13). The 49ers (14-9, 8-4 Conference USA) are unbeaten in their seven league games at home.
“It’s where we’re the most confident,” said 49ers senior guard Jordan Shepherd, who scored 26 points against UTSA (11-14, 5-7). “We’re here every day, it’s where we’re comfortable.”
Conversely, Charlotte is 2-8 (1-4 in the league) on the road, which is where the 49ers are headed again next week with games at league-leader North Texas on Thursday and Rice on Saturday.
“We can’t really travel on the road with it,” Shepherd said. “Which is what we’re trying to do with a young team. But home is where we’re comfortable.”
The 49ers’ lone league road victory came against Marshall. They had their chances in single-digit losses at Old Dominion and Southern Mississippi.
“It’s not like we haven’t played well on the road,” said 49ers’ second-year coach Ron Sanchez, whose first team won eight games last season. “Failure doesn’t really exist in our culture. We roll and we learn. I never tell these guys, ‘Don’t shoot the ball.’ Go work on your shot, just keep working on them, and then you have them (in a game), shoot them with confidence.”
49ers attendance still doesn’t match the crowds that came out during the years of previous home success, when fans more regularly came close to filling the 9,105-seat building. But a boisterous crowd of 4,679 — high for a conference game this season — came out Saturday.
Charlotte’s task against UTSA, as much as anything, would be on the defensive end, where the 49ers had to deal with two of C-USA’s top offensive threats.
UTSA guard Jhivvan Jackson entered the game as the nation’s second-leading scorer (27.1) and forward Keaton Wallace averaged 18.6 points. Charlotte didn’t do much to slow either — Wallace finished with 27 points and Jackson had 25.
“Those guys are incredible scorers,” Shepherd said. “But the difference between a team like that and a team like us, we try to slow the pace and try to find the best shot. (Jackson and Wallace) are prolific scorers, but sometimes they take unpredictable shots. They make them, but with us, we try to find the best shot possible.”
Said Sanchez: “We wanted to shut those two guys down. We wanted them not to get their averages. We really tried to not let the other guys go off, but we gave our best punch to those two. They still got 25 and 27.”
The game was physical. Forty-nine fouls were called (26 against the Roadrunners, 23 against the 49ers). Charlotte missed 10 of its first 16 free throws, but made 16 of its final 22, including 20 of 24 in the second half.
The 49ers also shot 51.9 percent from the field and tied a season high with 11-of-25 3-pointers. It was the third consecutive home game Charlotte had more than 50 percent of its shots.
Shepherd was 5-of-7 from 3-point range. Sophomore guard Malik Martin scored a career-high 19. Freshman guard Jahmir Young had an impressive line again — 16 points, eight rebounds, six assists and two steals. Young made 4-of-8 3-pointers, stopping a stretch of of 18 consecutive misses over the last three-plus games.
The 49ers don’t know when they’ll play at home again, or against whom. After next week’s games, C-USA goes into “bonus play,” where the league is divided into three groups (the top five in the standings, the next five and the bottom four). Teams in each group will play two home and two road games against each other.
The concept is based on the hope that, because C-USA regularly receives just one bid to the NCAA tournament, the top teams will improve their postseason résumés by playing only each other.
Saturday’s victory kept Charlotte inside the top five and within two games of first-place North Texas (16-9, 10-2).
David Scott: @davidscott14
