Threadgill for 3! Charlotte’s buzzer-beater in OT delivers statement win vs. Davidson

The ball seemed to be loose one too many times and Charlotte seemed to have missed one too many game-ending 3s with the game clock dwindling — but fate hadn’t yet met Jackson Threadgill.

With about four seconds left, and after Charlotte had already missed two free throws and another 3 in the same possession, Lu’Cye Patterson dove for and corralled one last offensive rebound and found Threadgill open on the wing. The 49ers’ shooting guard then rose up, flying above two other Davidson defenders, and let go of a 3 as the final buzzer sounded and saw it soar true.

The shot gave the 49ers a 68-66 overtime win against Davidson in John M. Belk Arena on Tuesday and sent the entire bench flying toward Threadgill, who was running toward the other side of the court, flexing and screaming in front of a Davidson crowd that wasn’t sure what it had just seen.

It was a shot that won’t soon be forgotten.

“Honestly, it’s a feeling I can’t even describe,” Threadgill said after hitting the winning shot. “It’s a lot of joy. It’s very gratifying. But bigger than that, it’s great to experience that with a great group of guys.”

Threadgill, a Concord native who attended Davidson Day School not far from Davidson’s campus, added: “We won that game. I didn’t win that game.”

With the win, Charlotte improved to 6-2. Davidson fell to 6-2.

“It wasn’t one play,” 49ers head coach Ron Sanchez said after notching what might be his most important win since joining the program in 2018. He couldn’t suppress a smile: “We were down 10, battled back, our defense kept us intact. And other guys made a lot of other plays.

“We’ll see this one, and we’ll remember this one, but man, the last eight minutes of that game, there were a lot of plays made that gave us an opportunity to take that ugly trophy home.”

The two Mecklenburg County schools play for a “Hornets Nest Trophy” each year, one fit with real twigs. Charlotte holds a 31-18 edge in the series, which dates to 1979.

Beyond the overtime period, which on its own earned this game a spot in Charlotte-Davidson lore, Tuesday night came with its fair share of aforementioned thrills and twists and cathartic screams into the crowd.

There was the very beginning of the contest, when Charlotte hit 3s on its first three possessions to ignite a 15-6 start and forced Davidson to burn a timeout before the first media timeout.

There was a play, with about 12 minutes to go in the second half, when Davidson’s Foster Loyer saved a loose ball and spotted up in the corner to give the Wildcats a 48-38 lead. That one sent the red-and-black crowd into a frenzy and, for a moment, punctuated a run that made the game feel out of reach.

There was the sequence with just under four minutes left that might’ve marked the best basketball the 49ers had played all season: Patterson hit a 3. And then, on the next possession, the Charlotte point guard was leading a fastbreak when he picked up his dribble right around half-court and tossed a game-defining alley-oop to Isaiah Folkes — who slammed it home to tie the game at 56. (The play paved the way for overtime, a period that featured eight lead changes.)

There was Loyer’s overall performance. The super-senior point guard, who came into Tuesday night as the nation’s fifth-leading scorer, poured in a game-high 22 points. He was backed up by big man Sam Mennenga with 21.

There was Aly Khalifa’s performance. Charlotte’s 6-foot-11 center who orchestrates the team’s Princeton offense led the 49ers with 19 points on 8-of-16 shooting. Igor Milicic Jr. added 18 points.

There was everything, Sanchez said.

“That was a really good basketball game as a whole,” the Charlotte coach said, his head shaking in understatement.

Sanchez also gave credit to Davidson and first-year head coach Matt McKillop, son of legendary Davidson coach Bob McKillop.

Said McKillop: “The competitiveness is what you want, and when a team plays like that, it makes you better. Hopefully you grow from wins. It’s a little more challenging to have to grow from losses. But if we can have every game be a battle like this, and be as exciting for fans like this, I think it can re-energize college basketball in this city.”