It’s been a long time-way too long-since UNC Charlotte made some noise on the national college basketball scene. Pretty much everyone would’ve rather the 49ers made their return in a different way than they did Thursday, though.
In just over a month of the 2017-18 college basketball season, we’ve already seen three coaching changes, and the latest came Thursday as Charlotte released former NBA star and noted good guy Mark Price after a 3-6 start to the season. The 49ers have lost four straight games, the last three including defeats at James Madison and Tennessee-Chattanooga teams picked near the bottom of their leagues, sandwiched around a 23-point loss to Wake Forest at home, and athletic director Judy Rose decided to pull the plug just 72 games into his coaching tenure.
The change was a stunner. In terrific reporting by David Scott of the Charlotte Observer, Price referred to it as an “awfully quick hook,” and considering he received just over 2 1/4 seasons before being let go, he’s right. Meanwhile, Rose commented that she believed Price had “lost his players.” Former Appalachian State coach Houston Fancher will take over the team on an interim basis for the remainder of the season, and already the fallout from the firing includes reports that Mark Price’s son Hudson-the 49ers’ No. 2 scorer and leading rebounder-is leaving the team, too.
Frustration with the Charlotte athletics program had been coming to a boiling point already of late, with the fledgling 49ers football team finishing a 1-11 season and Rose announcing that head coach Brad Lambert will return. The move to punt Price after keeping Lambert on board with a 17-41 record through five years was bound to fire up those already frustrated with 49er athletics.
From working in college athletics for over 10 years now, can tell anyone from observational experience that there are times when quick coaching changes are justified. As much as most anyone’s-including administrators’-ideal is that coaches be given a certain amount of time or that changes take place at a time optimal for student-athletes, the truth is sometimes a change is best made immediately to cut losses, before a bad situation gets worse.
Whether that was the case at Charlotte is something only those on the inside can answer. The answers from Rose in the Observer story aren’t exactly satisfying. To say a team is not meeting expectations when it loses to the likes of James Madison and Chattanooga is 100% fair game. To claim that a coach has lost the team because it’s not playing well is entirely another matter, and a significant charge that one better have more than circumstantial evidence for.
Rose is a longtime veteran administrator, with more than 40 years of experience in college athletics, including over 25 as the A.D. at UNCC. She was the first woman named to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee, better known as the NCAA Tournament selection committee. To suggest she’s not qualified for her job-as some did yesterday-is laughable, though probably not surprising in the sphere of passionate collegiate sports fans.
That doesn’t mean letting Price go was the right move, or even an easily defensible one. Unless there was a very good reason-and it’s possible no one may ever know even if there is-then the view here is Price deserved to at least finish out the year.
The fall of the Charlotte hoops program has mirrored that of a number of others currently in Conference USA, a league where once-prominent basketball programs now seem to go to slumber. The 49ers were a contender in C-USA’s early incarnation, regularly competing with the likes of Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette and Memphis and making eight NCAA Tournament trips from 1995-2005. Their 1998 NCAA second round tourney contest against North Carolina was among of the most memorable of that decade, with 49er guard Diego Guevera famously blowing kisses to his wife in the stands every time he made a three-pointer in a classic overtime game.
All of those schools eventually left C-USA and UNCC did, too, heading off to the Atlantic 10. It has never been the same since. The 49ers haven’t been back to the NCAAs since and rarely have been close. Six of the last 10 years have had losing records. Not even a return to Conference USA has helped.
Charlotte is hardly the only program in the league now that isn’t what it used to be. Old Dominion, UAB, UTEP and Western Kentucky also were once well-known for their hoops, yet have slipped to a level where at-large bids are a rarity. (Not coincidentally, ODU, UAB, WKU and UNCC all were once members of the Sun Belt Conference in the 1980s, back when it was among the premier basketball-first leagues in the country.)
There are plenty of factors influencing that now, a number of them out of their control, but in general a league with so many basketball schools with such tradition should be vastly better than C-USA has been in recent years. Of course, Charlotte’s move back to C-USA was driven by football, and it’s a common thread in all three schools with changes early this year.
UTEP (where Tim Floyd retired), East Carolina (Jeff Lebo resigned) and Charlotte are all part of the current back end of NCAA Division I-A, a.k.a. the Bowl Championship Subdivision, and schools at that level have regularly been putting all their eggs in the football basket, dreaming of a golden ticket to one of the five TV Conferences. At almost all of them, basketball has become a distant second in recent years to buying lottery tickets at ridiculous odds dreaming of a (highly unlikely) football-based promotion to a bigger conference someday, whether they’d admit it or not.
There’s nothing wrong with sponsoring football, and football didn’t get the 49ers into this mess. At some point, though, schools like UNC Charlotte are going to have to take a hard look at if they’re sacrificing high-profile basketball programs for the pipe dream of football riches, and if so, what are they going to do about it.
The success of a league like the Big East shows just what schools can do when they put their minds to basketball. There’s no reason why a hoops-first conference couldn’t excel in the South, too. At this point, though, it’s hard not to think Charlotte and schools like it are only getting out of it what they put into it, and it’s doubtful more coaching turnover will do anything to change that.
Side Dishes:
- Northwestern embarrassed Valparaiso 84-50. The Wildcats in their last two games have easily looked the best they have all year, and in this one they hit 12 of 22 three-pointers, including 7 of 8 in the first 10 minutes. The Crusaders played without leading scorer Tevonn Walker, who is out indefinitely with mononucleosis. Turnovers have been a major issue all season for Valpo, and six more TOs than field goals (21 to 15) and a 30-4 deficit in points off turnovers are no way to beat any team, much less an experienced Big Ten squad.
- USC handled Santa Clara 82-59. Bennie Boatwright (21 points, 11 rebounds), Chemezie Metu (20 and 11) and Nick Rakocevic (16 and 10) all had double-doubles, and Jordan McLaughlin (nine points, 10 assists) nearly did, too. Strangely for a team supposedly so deep, though: just 10 points from the bench.
- Baylor shot a scorching 66.1% to hammer Texas Southern 99-68. The Bears were far better from the floor-41 of 62-and even three-point line (10 of 18, 55.6%) than from the free-throw line (7 of 13, 53.8%).
- South Florida led Bethune-Cookman by just one at halftime before pulling away for a surprisingly easy 83-63 win. Fairleigh Dickinson transfer Stephan Jiggetts notched 20 points and seven assists for the Bulls.
- Add South Dakota to the list of teams reaching the 10-win mark. The Coyotes won at Northern Arizona 90-77. Matt Mooney scored 24 and Nebraska transfer Nick Fuller chipped in 17 points and seven boards off the bench. Coach Craig Smith has another really good team at USD, which almost won at TCU last month.
- Tulsa avoided slipping up in its first game after taking down Kansas State, holding off Prairie View A&M 77-73. Junior Etou has been excellent for the Golden Hurricane, and he had 19 points and nine boards. The Panthers are another of those SWAC teams whose record (2-8) doesn’t say much but has been competitive in almost every game while not playing a single home game yet.
- Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton announced that junior Davon Dillard and freshman Zack Dawson have both been dismissed from the team. Both were reserves for the Cowboys, averaging just over four points per game in limited minutes. Boynton was forthright in discussing the dismissals with the Tulsa World, saying the decisions were made Wednesday night after meeting with the players and speaking to their parents.
- Good as the Missouri Valley Conference’s start has been this year, the league also has been absolutely plundered by injuries. The latest is at Evansville, where second-leading scorer and up-and-coming sophomore Dru Smith is now out for four weeks with a stress fracture. This comes just over two weeks after leading scorer Ryan Taylor was sidelined with a fractured foot. Smith also is the MVC leader in assists and had picked up some scoring load after Taylor’s injury. The Purple Aces are a surprising 8-2 to start the season but have a trip to Duke coming next week.
Tonight’s Menu:
- The night tips off with Tennessee State against North Carolina A&T. At least this one has two teams with winning records, a delicacy on nights with schedules as thin as this. A&T’s Femi Olujobi has cooled off some but still is averaging over 24 points and nine rebounds per game, while Dana Ford has reloaded TSU again and made the Tigers once more a tough out.
- The closest thing to a national television game is Maryland-Eastern Shore at Creighton, proof that there is a such thing as too much Big East on Fox Sports 1 (8 p.m. Eastern tip).
- The best game is probably South Dakota State at Colorado (8 p.m., Pac-12 Network). The Jackrabbits have already bitten teams like Iowa and Mississippi, while the Buffs are coming off a home loss to San Diego and therefore should be sufficiently motivated.
- Defending Big West tourney champion UC Davis has done nothing to diminish views that it is ready for another run at the title with a 7-2 start, with Chima Moneke averaging 20 and 11 and juco transfer T.J Shorts one of the top newcomers in the league. The Aggies are at San Francisco, which is 5-3 but has missed Charles Minlend badly.
- Dartmouth has been very competitive in a 3-4 start under second-year coach David McLaughlin. The Big Green heads to the Midwest to take on struggling Illinois-Chicago.
Have a terrific Friday and a great weekend.
Twitter: @HoopvilleAdam
Email: [email protected]
