Charlotte Basketball: Five Games that Decide 49ers’ Season

UNC Charlotte Basketball will come down to five games to determine what kind of year this will be.

Charlotte Basketball (49ers) is in the third season of the tenure of Coach Mark Price. Third seasons are often telling for what a coach’s tenure is going to look like. This is the year where a coach’s own recruits and transfers are usually embedded into the identity of a program and the last vestiges of the old regime are now seniors that have bought in or players who have already transferred out.

Coach Price is in one of those crossroads seasons. The 49ers have been average at best in Conference USA over the last two years. They have finished seventh and tenth in the last two seasons. That is not a great place to be in the fourteen team league.

The first reason is the league strength. Charlotte rejoined Conference USA four years ago for football purposes but left a superior basketball league to do so. Being seventh or tenth in the Atlantic Ten would have been more impressive.

The second reason is the conference tournament structure. It is unlikely that any Conference USA would win an at-large bid by itself. That means the road to the NCAA Tournament lies through victory in the Conference USA tournament. As the league has fourteen teams, the top four get a bye out of the first round of games. That position, fourth or better, would be the logical target for the 49ers to prove they are improving under Price.

If not, Price will need to bank some goodwill by winning games of significance. A key victory against a well-known opponent might balance out the muddle of conference play. With that in mind, let’s identify the five key games on the 49ers’ schedule this year. They follow in order of date, not necessarily importance.