Dreadful season nears end. New AD has been hired. What questions face Charlotte 49ers?

The dreariest men’s basketball season in recent memory for the Charlotte 49ers comes to what can only be described as a merciful end this weekend.

If the 49ers (5-22, 1-15 Conference USA) don’t beat either Florida International on Thursday at Halton Arena or Florida Atlantic on Saturday, those five victories would tie for the fewest in school history. A loss against FIU would be the 49ers’ 15^th in a row, which would be a program record.

One more indignity is already ensured: The 49ers, mired in last place in 14-team C-USA, didn’t qualify for next week’s 12-team league tournament in Frisco, Texas. The only other time a Charlotte team wasn’t involved in any kind of postseason play (since 1976, Charlotte’s final season as an independent) was in 2011, when the 49ers weren’t included in the Atlantic 10 tournament.

It’s been that kind of season.

“We’ve lost games, we’ve lost sleep, we’ve lost appetites,” interim coach Houston Fancher said this week.

So what’s next for the once-proud Charlotte program, which now hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament in 13 seasons and continues to see a years-long decline in attendance (an all-time Halton low of 4,018 this season)?

Change is coming at the top of the 49ers’ athletics department, where new athletics director Mike Hill starts March 15, replacing Judy Rose, who will retire this summer.

Among Hill’s first decisions will be whether to retain Fancher, an assistant who replaced Mark Price in November. Rose fired Price nine games into his third season, saying the program was headed in the wrong direction. Rose also said, at the time of the firing, that there was still time to turn the season around under Fancher, a former Southern Conference Coach of the Year at Appalachian State.

That never happened.

Fancher has had to quickly transform the culture in the locker room, nurturing players who, according to Rose and confirmed later by multiple sources to the Observer, had soured on Price. Fancher also had to deal with player attrition and injuries that hit what was already a thin roster.

Hudson Price, Mark’s son and the team’s top 3-point shooter and rebounder at the time, left the program when his dad was fired.

A glimmer of hope was offered when the 49ers beat East Carolina in Fancher’s first game in charge. But Charlotte has since lost 16 of 17, including the past 14 (the fourth longest active streak in the country).

Some of that can be attributed to injuries, notably to junior guard Andrien White, who missed four games, and freshmen Ryan Murphy and Bryant Thomas, both of whom are out for the season.

But as the losses have piled up, the tougher it’s become.

“We’ve looked beaten down a little bit,” Fancher said.

And while Fancher has admitted that the team’s won-loss record hurts his chances at being retained, it can be argued that he didn’t have much of a chance to succeed. It can also be debated that, while Hill’s potential decision to let Fancher go would be the obvious one, it’s worth exploring why it might not be the best one.

Firing Fancher and bringing in somebody new would provide the basketball program with a fresh start, something a significant portion of the 49ers’ fan base craves. That’s something the 49ers appeared to be getting in Price only three years ago when Alan Major was fired after five seasons.

Before Price could get going, he had to find several new players after some of Major’s recruits backed out and other players transferred. Two of those transfers -- Torin Dorn at N.C. State and Keyshawn Woods at Wake Forest – have blossomed into solid players in the ACC. One of Major’s recruits – Ebuka Izundu – is now a key contributor at Miami.

Price was left to essentially rebuild the roster, a process that was ongoing when he was fired.

A similar task would no doubt face another new coaching staff.

If Fancher were to be retained, the three high school recruits who signed in November – guards Cooper Robb and Isaiah Bigelow and forward Dravon Mangum – would stick with the 49ers, according to a source close to the program.

Would the recruits remain if Fancher and the staff were let go? That’s no sure bet.

And whether players like standout point guard Jon Davis and White would stay for their senior seasons to play for a new coach is also anybody’s guess. Making that decision easier for them might be a new rule reportedly being considered by the NCAA that would allow players to transfer without sitting out a season if a coach is fired or resigns.

Lots of questions for the Charlotte 49ers. Soon, there will be answers.

This story was originally published February 28, 2018 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Dreadful season nears end. New AD has been hired. What questions face Charlotte 49ers?."