Brice Williams leading a physical 49ers basketball team into Conference USA tournament
It’s a good thing the Charlotte 49ers’ do not play again until Thursday night.
Junior guard Brice Williams, who played game-high 45 minutes on Saturday, and the rest of the 49ers need some rest after their 93-91 double overtime loss to UAB at Halton Arena.
Charlotte ran out of gas chasing UAB guard Jordan Walker and the Blazers around during their regular-season finale on Senior Night. Walker scored a game-high 41 points, but the 49ers still nearly pulled off a last-second victory.
With five seconds remaining, Williams took an inbound pass on the right wing near the Charlotte sideline. He jabbed left and tried driving but was immediately denied. Needing to get a shot off, Williams fired an off-balance 23-footer as time expired. The shot rainbowed toward the rim. A fan shouted “that’s going in” as a crowd of 2,534 watched Williams’ shot fall just short of being a walk-off winner.
“We wanted to get something hopefully going out to the basket, but they took that away,” 49ers’ coach Ron Sanchez said after the game. “Brice is a guy who makes shots so we put the ball in his hands, and we’re gonna live with the outcome. I thought it was going in. It was right online, just a little short. Maybe. If we didn’t play on Thursday, we would’ve had more legs down the stretch to make that one.”
The 49ers (18-13, 9-11) were coming off a five-point loss to UTSA on Thursday before taking the Blazers to double overtime. Despite their current two-game losing streak, the 49ers’ regular-season finale essentially did not matter. Charlotte entered the game already locked into the No. 5 seed for this week’s Conference USA championship tournament.
The team will face No. 4 Middle Tennessee at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Ford Center in Frisco, Texas.
Charlotte has not advanced to the conference quarterfinals since the 2016-17 season. Thanks to its seeding, the 49ers will start in the quarterfinals this season. But to avoid yet another one-and-done conference performance, Sanchez said the team will need to build upon the positives from their past two losses.
Sanchez said he’s most encouraged by the team’s ability to navigate two completely different game plans during a week that featured both a road and home game.
“My thing is the level of focus it takes to go from playing on the road against one opponent that plays one way, and then coming in and playing against a team that defends you in multiple different ways, sometimes multiple ways in one possession,” Sanchez said. “Having the focus and the ability to make the right plays and the right reads show their level of maturity.”
The 49ers’ maturity helped them endure a back-and-fourth game that included 24 lead changes. Their toughness was also on full display considering Sanchez only used seven players. He’ll likely rely on a short bench of upperclassmen come tournament time.
“It was one of those games where I’m not sure if the young guys that are not as experienced, who have to go from one scouting (role) to the other and then apply it quickly against that level of athleticism (are ready),” he said. “So we went with the old guys that we trust.”
Defensively, the 49ers’ made UAB’s Walker work for all of his game-high 41 points. Sanchez said he anticipates the 49ers bringing a similar tough-nosed defense effort to the conference tournament.
“He’s just he’s a scorer. He’s a guy that can put the ball in the basket,” Sanchez said. “I’m not gonna say that the shots that he made today were easy. We made him earn his 40. Some of them were contested, and some of them were off the dribble. He scored at three different levels. He’s a shotmaker.”
Walker had 11 points in the first eight minutes but did not score another first-half point. But the 5-foot-10 guard netted 30 second-half points. 49ers’ guard Lu’cye Patterson defended Walker in the backcourt. He held his own, finishing plus-three in plus-minus while scoring 19 points.
Patterson said the 49ers proved two valuable things about themselves on Saturday that can propel them into the conference tournament.
“We are a real physical team. We played very physically today and I feel like we could play with anybody. Anyone trying to be physical, we can match that,” Patterson said. “We aren’t going anywhere. We got heart and we will be in every game just because we got no quit in us.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2023 at 6:25 PM.
