Title Game Talent

The North Carolina High School AAAA state championship game is tonight, Friday November 30th, in Chapel Hill at 7:30, and will feature some impressive future Charlotte 49ers talent.

The starting running backs for each team; Jachin Watkins of New Bern and Chris Duffy of Port Ridge, have each committed to play for the Charlotte 49ers next year.

Jachin Watkins is a 6'0 225lb power running back in the mold of a Jonathan Stewart.  He has speed, but mainly relies on his bulldozing size and power to gain yards.  During the regular season, Watkins ran for 17 TD's and 1,412 yards.  He averaged over 8 yards per carry.  He also scored on three receiving TD's.  I have seen Watkins play in person, and I'm convinced he can hang at the next level, but he was not highly recruited.  Bryant University was his only other offer aside from Charlotte, however he also received interest from ECU, Wake Forest, Elon, Navy, and NC State.

Chris Duffy, at 5'11 190, is a little smaller than Watkins, but still has D1 size.  Duffy relies on speed and shifty moves a little more so than Watkins, and has a style more reminiscent of a Deangelo Williams.  Over the course of the regular season, Duffy ran for 17 TD's and 1,320 yards, averaging over 7 yards per carry.  He ran for over 140 yards in a game four times this season, including two 160+ yard performances.  Chris was pretty highly recruited, as he received scholarship offers from East Carolina and Tennessee in addition to Charlotte.  He also drew interest from App State, Clemson, Uconn, UNC, NC State, Perdue, South Carolina, and VA Tech.

Tonight will be a very big stage for these future 49ers to showcase their talents. I have a feeling they will both give Niner Nation a taste of very good things to look forward to..

Charlotte to play in 2013 Puerto Rico Tip Off

Per multiple sources, the Charlotte 49ers will be playing in the 2013 Puerto Rico Tip Off tournament next year.  The field also includes Michigan, Florida State, Auburn, Georgetown, Kansas State, Long Beach State, and VCU.  The tournament is usually aired on ESPN.

The 49ers should have a solid team next year and will have a chance make a statement against top competition early in the season.  Charlotte loses star center Chris Braswell after this year, but brings in a Top150 recruit in shooting guard Shawn Lester, who was a 2012 recruit, but is sitting out this season to become academically eligible.

And yes, I will be saving up to go to this starting this every second.

It's the most, wonderful tiiiime, of the yeaaarr...

Today, along with Selection Sunday, is my favorite day of the college basketball season.  It's finally here.  It's FINALLY OPENING DAY!  Everyone from Savannah State to Indiana, from Maryland Eastern Shore to Kentucky, everyone is tied in the standings, and everyone has an undefeated record.  It's time to get the 2012-13 season underway!

The Charlotte 49ers open the season tonight, November 9th at 6:00pm, by hosting Charleston Southern of the Big South Conference.  CSU has a pretty solid squad.  The Bucs were picked to win the league by most every pundit, analyst, and news outlet.  As 49er fans, we are conditioned to expect a sputtering start to the year, so this matchup has worried a lot of us.  We almost always start out the season with an early season loss to a "lesser" opponent.  The Gardner Webb debacle of 2010 sticks out painfully in our minds.  Many 49er fans are claiming this will be an dangerous match-up and many are even saying they fully expect a loss tonight.  Well, let's step back from the ledge a second.

The season opening loss to Gardener Webb a couple years ago was a special scenario.  We were playing with six, yes SIX scholarship players, and two walk-ons that game.  One of those walk-ons had been with the team for less than two weeks.  He was a late addition due to the fact that we were so decimated by injuries and suspensions.  We had essentially sent out a glorified intramural team.

Tonight we will be without starting small forward Demario Mayfield, and rumors are swirling around that Chris Braswell will be sitting this one out as well. So let's say we do take the floor tonight without those two upperclassmen leaders.  It definitely hurts, but we will be OK.  Here is what we have left.

The starting lineup will likely be the same as it was for the Pfeiffer exhibition:

PG - soph. Pierria Henry
SG - soph. Terrence Williams
SF - soph. E. Victor Nickerson
PF - fr. Darion Clark
C - fr. Willie Clayton (would not be surprised to see rs-fr Mike Thorne get the start here)

That is a young, but very talented, and very athletic lineup.  We also have senior VA Tech transfer JT Thompson coming off the bench, along with sharp shooting guards Denzel Ingram and Ivan Benkovic.

Here is why I feel very confident in a Niners win tonight.  CSU is a good team, but their strength lies in their backcourt.  Like any other Big South team, they are very small, and their frontcourt players' sizes resemble our wing guards and small forwards.  Freshmen Darion Clark and Willie Clayton absolutely abused the small Pfeiffer frontcourt, and Mike Thorne showed some flashes as well.  Granted Charleston Southern is notably better than Pfeiffer, it still remains that our young PF's and C have proven that they can take care of business against smaller players.

That leaves the heralded Buccaneers backcourt to take care of.  While they do have some speedy sharpshooting guards, I think Charlotte fans need to step back into reality and remember what we have.  Pierria Henry is possibly the single best on-the-ball defender the 49ers have ever had.  Scoff and call that an exaggeration if you'd like, but the kid was sixth in the nation in steals last year, as a freshman.  He will absolutely take care of business on the defensive end.  Those Big South guards won't see a matchup nightmare like him for the rest of the year.  At shooting guard, we have uber-athletic Terrence Williams.  This kid just gets better and better every time he takes the court.  On offense and defense, his combination of speed plus a 6'4 200lb frame will prove too much to handle.  Then off the bench comes All-State, All-Everything superguard Denzel Ingram.  Ingram went 4 of 5 from behind the arc against Pfeiffer, and I expect a solid game from him tonight.

I know we are jaded.  I know we have been conditioned to expect early season disappointment but this is the not the same Niners team from the past couple years.  The rebuilding is over.  Major has assembled his troops, and it's time to WIN.

Final score prediction:
CHARLESTON SOUTHERN 60
CHARLOTTE 76

Charlotte vs Pfeiffer

On Thursday, Nov 1st, the 49ers will play their annual dunk-fest,
err I mean exhibition game.  Exhibitions are something every team
does, and it's rarely anything out of the ordinary (though some big
name team gets caught off guard and is upset by a little guy every year).  
It's always the same routine; a division one team will schedule a local D2
or D3 team, they run their plays, shake off the rust, and throw down a
dozen alley oops in the process.  Fans get excited, players get to
show off, and the season gets underway.

This Thursday, the 49ers will host the Pfeiffer Falcons, or is it
Pfalcons?  This matchup has the look of a same-old same-old exhibition
game, but there is actually some colorful history here.

I will preface the following with this:  Some of this is second,
third, fourth-hand information, whatever you want to call it, so I
won't include any direct quotes.  However, this was also witnessed
first hand by yours truly, as I was sitting two or three rows back
from mid court, so I had a nice view and was within earshot of all that
went down.  And with that, I will proceed...

Longtime Charlotte 49ers head coach Bobbly Lutz got his coaching 
career off the ground at Pfeiffer.  Actually, saying he got it off the ground 
is a gross understatement.  Coach Lutz came in and turned Pfeiffer into 
a division II powerhouse.  He took the Falcons to six straight NAIA 
tournaments, including two Final Fours, an Elite Eight, and an appearance 
in the championship game.  His all-time record at Pfeiffer ended up at 180-89.  
He is pretty much a legend around there.

Fast forward a few years and he is coaching the Charlotte 49ers.  Just
like any other team, we would schedule a "cupcake team" for our
exhibition each year, usually a local team, sometimes a traveling "All
Star" team.  As you might have guessed, with his connections to the
school, Pfeiffer ended up on the schedule a couple times in the early
2000s.

We ended up playing the Falcons two or three times, but it is the last
encounter that is of interest.

Records of exhibition games are not exactly posted all over the
internet, but as I remember, it was the beginning of the 2004-2005
season when Pfeiffer last ventured into Halton Arena.  The game
started to go as you'd imagine it would.  We out-rebounded them,
out-dunked them, out-muscled them, and pretty much overpowered them in
every facet of the game.  So how does a team whose average height is
that of your typical high school team hang with a Top 25 division one
team (yes we were ranked that year!) full of 6'8 horses?  You play
dirty.

As the game wore on, you could tell the Charlotte players were getting
a little more frustrated than a team who is up by a couple dozen
should be.  From the stands, it's sometimes tough to catch the
subtleties, nuances, and other ultra quick happenings on the court, so
it wasn't clear at first what was going on.

However, we soon caught the gist of what was happening.  The Pfeiffer
players could not out rebound the much taller 49ers, so what happened
was they would wait until a Charlotte player jumped for a rebound, and
then they would throw their body up against the Charlotte player's
legs, thereby undercutting him and sending him to the floor.  Do this
once or twice a game, and it's brushed off as accidental or just rough
defense, but continue to do this, and you're going to make a lot of
people very mad.  Here we were just trying to essentially get in a
practice, and these guys were risking serious injury to our players.

In addition to our players glaring and barking at the little Pfeiffer
players, coach Lutz, who was known to be very passionate and mega high
energy, was starting to really ride the refs, and you could tell the
fire was building.  By half time, we thought the refs would need a
body guard, and a few quick shouts and death-stares were sent from
Bobby towards the Falcons head coach.

As the game went on, the margin of victory widened considerably, but
you could tell the Charlotte players were very angry, and coach Lutz
was absolutely fuming.  As the final buzzer sounded, coach Lutz was
still at mid court with a few assistant's arms around him, giving the
Pfeifer coach an earful.  Actually at this point I'm pretty sure he
was breathing fire.  Like I said, I won't use direct quotes,
as it was a long time ago, and none of this is documented other than
in our green-tinted memory banks, but the words "YOU WILL NEVER PLAY
HERE AGAIN!" may or may not have been shouted by Bobby at the Pfeiffer
coach.  And anyone who was in the lower level of Halton Arena that
night would tell you they lean towards "may have."

And guess what.. Pfeiffer indeed never played in Halton Arena again
while coach Lutz was at the helm.  This was a fairly big deal, as
Bobby was beloved by the Pfeiffer basketball family.  It's also a big
deal for the team and fan base of a school that small to get a high
profile matchup like they had with Charlotte, so for Bobby to cut ties
like that speaks volumes about how ugly it got.

Now fast forward one more time to November 2012.  Bobby Lutz is
reeling in McDonald's All Americans at NC State, and former Ohio State
assistant Alan Major is head coach of the 49ers.  Pfeiffer also has a
new head coach, now in his third year with the team.  So It took both
teams changing coaches and almost a decade to pass before Pfeiffer was
able to make their way back into Halton Arena.

Once again Pfeiffer will be out-everythinged by the Niners, but let's
hope they play a little nicer this time around.. I wouldn't want to
have to sic Bobby on them.

Post One

This is post number one of the Niner Green blog.  That's right, I now have more blog posts than ECU basketball has 20-win seasons!

I am a Charlotte alum, class of 2007, and have been bleeding green since the mid 1990's.  I plan on posting one or two updates a week, and will keep it light and entertaining, but also informative (or as informative as a blog who's author lives 5 plus hours away from Charlotte could possibly be!).  The App State fans who will no doubt spy on here cannot read too well, so the entries will usually be fairly short.

I hope you enjoy my rambling thoughts on all things Charlotte 49ers!

Welcome to Niner Green.. GO NINERS!