How Ron Sanchez took what he learned at Virginia to revamp Charlotte 49ers basketball

Before every Charlotte 49ers basketball practice, a student manager marks an area on the floor about 16 feet around the basket with tape.

The tape forms an arc — going up either side of the lane and meeting near the top of the key, a few feet inside the 3-point line.

Inside that area is where the 49ers’ defense does its business. Welcome to Charlotte’s so-called “pack line,” where the 49ers are beginning to thrive in coach Ron Sanchez’s second season with the program.

Defense has been the key factor in Charlotte’s rise under Sanchez to near the top of the Conference USA standings this season. The 49ers (12-7, 6-2 C-USA) get a significant test Thursday night in a game at Louisiana Tech (15-5, 6-2).

“It’s fun to be part of something you can take so much pride in,” sophomore guard Cooper Robb said of Charlotte’s defense. “We work on it constantly. We want to suffocate the other teams with our defense.”

Sanchez brought the “pack” (as he calls it) defense from Virginia, where he was Cavaliers coach Tony Bennett’s top assistant for nine years (and three seasons previous to that at Washington State). The basics of the pack defense are to force contested outside shots, not allow passes into the post and stop drives. All five defensive players must be in constant communication, moving as one unit inside the pack line (except for the player guarding the ball).

It’s not an easy defense to play against, as Virginia’s success under Bennett has proven. But it’s also complicated to install. And it takes time to absorb.

But, Robb said, “it’s definitely catching on.”

The 49ers’ scoring defense against C-USA opponents is 61.4 points per game, second lowest in the league behind Louisiana Tech’s 60.9. Charlotte’s field-goal percentage against league foes is 43.3 — middle of the pack — but the 49ers hold opposing teams to 25.2 percent 3-point shooting, the lowest in C-USA.

According to KenPom’s advanced statistics, Charlotte’s steal percentage of 11.9 in all games ranks 22nd in the country. The 49ers’ 29.8 percent 3-point defense in all games is tied for 39th nationally.

In a 75-49 victory Saturday over Florida International, the 49ers held the Panthers (who had been averaging 81.2 points) to 23 points in the second half and 24.0 shooting for the game. FIU, the second-best 3-point shooting team in C-USA entering the game (37.7 percent), managed just 3 of 17 from beyond the arc.

“We work at it every day,” said Robb, who averages 1.7 steals per game. “It’s the little things you do, that you have to do every single game, that you have to rely on. If we’re doing that every single day, that helps us.

“So we’ve got that tape down there for the ‘pack line.’ We have drills that put us in the gaps, float over the ball screen, have high hands. We’re all on a string. When you’re seeing the actual pack line every day, it really helps us.”

The “pack” defense was created by Bennett’s father Dick, when he was coach at Washington State. Other coaches have also adopted versions of it, including Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Louisville’s Chris Mack. Appalachian State’s first-year coach Dustin Kerns used it to beat Charlotte earlier this season.

The 49ers play a deliberate, half-court offense (they average 67.7 points), so the defense has to be there every game. That’s something a team that features 11 freshmen or sophomores and two grad transfers is growing into.

“It’s getting better,” Sanchez said. “I wish I could tell you (that) you arrive at it. You don’t. I like to play golf. Sometimes I step out there and my driver is on. Maybe I hit a decent amount of fairways. Then I show up the next day thinking it’s there and it’s not. So you’ve got to refocus, over and over.”

There’s plenty on which to focus.

“They’re starting to understand the system as a whole,” Sanchez said. “Every single person is so valued and important for doing things right. If you have four doing it right and one wrong, it fails. The goal is to get all five to be really synchronized and in unison.”

The 49ers have long since passed last season’s victory total of eight. As the wins have piled up, different trends might emerge. What does a strong defensive effort actually look like?

“We look at a lot of different things,” Sanchez said. “It’s not just the numbers. Yes, we want to contest shots to make sure they shoot a low percentage. That’s an obvious stat. But it’s the positioning, the posture, the feet, anticipating instead of being reactive. A lot of things fall into play. It’s not a black and white thing.”

Said Robb: “(Against) FIU, we held the best 3-point shooting team to 3 of 19. Other games, we made sure we kept them out of the paint. Against Marshall (a 77-75 victory), they like to play quick and get up and down the floor and shoot it a lot. We stopped that. So it varies from team to team, what being successful is.

“What you want to do is to stop that team from getting in that groove. That’s really what our term for success is.”

49ers notes

▪ Guard Jahmir Young won C-USA’s freshman of the week award for a fifth time. Young averaged 18 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 2.7 assists in three games last week (a loss at Old Dominion and victories against Florida Atlantic and FIU).

▪ Sophomore guard Brandon Younger announced on Twitter on Tuesday he’s leaving the program. Younger averaged 23.5 minutes in 25 games (starting 12) last season, averaging 5.8 points and 3.2 rebounds. With the addition of grad transfer Drew Edwards and the return from injury of Luka Vasic, Younger fell out of this year’s rotation and was playing an average of 2.2 minutes in 10 games.

▪ Charlotte stays on the road Saturday with a game at Southern Mississippi.

Charlotte at Louisiana Tech

When: 7:30 p.m., Thursday

Where: Thomas Assembly Center, Ruston, La.

Watch: ESPN+

Listen: 730-AM.

This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 12:43 PM.