Hot start fizzles for Charlotte in 79-53 loss to Utah State 

CHARLOTTE ATHLETICS

Arden Conyers drives into the lane for Charlotte in the 49ers' 79-53 loss to Utah State Dec. 7 at Halton Arena.

The Charlotte 49ers led Utah State by eight points with 13 minutes to play in the first half.

Then everything unraveled in a 79-53 loss. 

“They are an outstanding team that punish you when you turn the ball over,” Charlotte coach Aaron Fearne said. “They get out in transition, which you saw multiple times. They do that better than a lot of teams do. I think tonight, that is the most points they have scored off turnovers than they did against anybody this year. That built some pressure and that is what kind of happened on the back end of that first half.”

The 49ers (4-6) committed 19 turnovers compared to Utah State’s six and the Aggies scored 29 points off takeaways. Fearne said Charlotte is struggling to put complete games together and compete with toughness.

“At this stage, [the team] doesn’t have the ability to handle pressure and have the discipline to sustain a level of high level thinking for a 40-minute game,” he said. “It’s happened in every game we’ve played. We’ve been up and we can’t withstand the pressure. We’ve been down because we can’t handle the pressure and then we have to fight. That’s a level of softness, if you want me to be honest with you. I try to put our group in difficult situations every day in practice, mentally, physically and emotionally. I think that is our job as coaches.”

The goal now is finding something that resonates in practice and translates to games.

“There has been a shift here in the last four or five practices,” Fearne said, “just on their intent to have a higher level of focus for longer periods of time. The results aren’t going to be immediate. It takes a little bit of a slow drip, but we need better leadership during games. I can’t call 100 timeouts. I can’t organize everything for the guys. … We want to make sure we are on the right page at the right time. So, [we are] unfortunately going through difficult times together as a group.”

The one glimmer of hope for the 49ers is this season has parallels to 2023-24 when Charlotte had a bumpy start but was able to turn things around and finished third in the American Conference with a 13-5 record.
Fearne is hoping the spark will be found sooner rather than later.

“You hope that you can learn things together [early],” he said. “You experience things together and I talked to the guys about leaning back on their experiences and learning from them. Conference play is going to be tough. There are some really good teams [in the American]. This [Utah State] team just played South Florida and got their butt kicked, so we have to do a lot of growing. We’ve got to get healthy. We can’t seem to get right in that space. …

“At some point we have to peak and play our best basketball at the right time. I feel like we’ve shifted towards the right direction the last 10 days.”

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