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.
Charlotte continues it’s Conference USA schedule this Saturday when they take on Louisville at 7 p.m. in Freedom Hall. Charlotte is 15-16 all-time against their old conference foes, including a 5-10 record at Freedom Hall. The Niners held a 12-9 series advantage from 1996-2005 when the two teams were members of Conference USA.
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