Charlotte 49ers feel they’ve caught lightning in a bottle with new coach Aaron Fearne
Last June, just months before the college basketball season began, the Charlotte 49ers lost their basketball coach. And athletic director Mike Hill had a big decision.
Should he promote an assistant, someone his players were familiar with, or take a chance hiring someone from outside the program?
Hill chose to promote Charlotte assistant Aaron Fearne, 49, naming him interim head coach. Earlier this week, Hill removed the interim tag after Fearne’s team won nine of 10 games and brought back a kind of excitement the program hasn’t seen in years.
Thursday night, Charlotte (15-8, 9-2 AAC) hosts UTSA (8-16, 2-9) in Fearne’s first game in his full-time role. And Hill thinks he’s found lightning in a bottle.
“The choices (last summer) were hiring coach Fearne and keeping the team together, but we didn’t know for sure,” Hill said. “Guys said, ‘We’re going to stay and play,’ but you don’t really know. (The other choice was) to hire from outside and likely face a rebuild where you maybe lose two-thirds of your roster, and the portal is closed except for your guys leaving.”
Hill chose Fearne because he thought Fearne could keep the 49ers’ team together and he also feared what he called “limping” into the school’s first year in the American Athletic Conference.
And as it turns out, Charlotte — and Fearne — have done a little bit better than limp into anything.
Slow start, big run
Before former coach Ron Sanchez left for an associate head coaching job at Virginia, Charlotte had already lost its two best players to the transfer portal in forward Brice Williams and post player Ali Khalifa.
So there were a lot of questions of what Charlotte would look like this season, as it left Conference USA for what’s considered a tougher league.
The 49ers were picked to finish 13th out of 14 teams in the AAC.
By the end of December, Charlotte appeared headed that way, having lost 4-of-5 games and preparing to play nationally ranked Florida Atlantic, a league opponent fresh off an appearance in 2023 Final Four in Houston.
But a funny thing happened.
Charlotte beat FAU, earning its first home win against a ranked opponent in 14 years.
The 49ers eventually won their next eight conference games in a row, a school-record, as they embraced a playing style Fearne learned while building championship level professional teams in Australia.
Charlotte began to play a tough, physical, never-give-up style of basketball, which helped it twice rally from 20-point deficits during that win streak.
“We’ve got to go out there and be really physical, really edgy and just get it out there, man,” Fearne said. “Like, get after it. We can talk about execution stuff, but the effort stuff, I don’t ever want to question that....Winning is not easy. Winning is very difficult. I think losing is easy as heck. Do nothing and that’s what you’ll get.”
Fearne’s big moment vs. ECU
It was during the win streak that the team really started buying into Fearne’s lunch pail philosophy and a genuine excitement developed around a program that had not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2005.
Before a nationally televised game against in-state rival East Carolina earlier this month, students announced they would camp out before the game in front of Halton Arena, naming the campsite, “Fearneville.”
Charlotte beat the Pirates 67-52 in front of 8,201 fans, the first home sellout in 11 years. Hill, the athletic director, was pretty sure he wouldn’t need a national coaching search.
“We saw the competitive disposition of this team, particularly in conference play,” Hill said. “It became pretty clear to me that we had something special brewing. You keep waiting, right? You beat FAU and you think, “OK, there will be a letdown the next game,’ because there could’ve been. There wasn’t. You win the next game. Oh, you win again. You realize these guys are bringing it every night.”
But for Hill, the East Carolina game was different.
Six years ago, Hill left a job as Executive Associate Athletics Director for External Affairs at the University of Florida. In the SEC, he’d seen plenty of big crowds and big moments.
He texted his son, who goes to Florida, and told him that environment for Charlotte-ECU was good as he’d ever seen. He said he had friends around the nation texting him, saying the crowd was so loud on the broadcast that they had to turn the sound on their televisions down.
Hill had not seen that before in Halton Arena. He knew Fearne, as much as anyone, was responsible for bringing that type of atmosphere there.
“Fans who have been a part of this place for a long time, they can recall when Halton was like that on a regular basis,” Hill said. “For our students who haven’t experienced that, they were absolutely electric; 3,000 of them in the building. I walked out that day and I’m like, ‘This is done.’”
I love basketball
Fearne is a basketball junkie. He said he really learned the game in New Zealand from his high school coach, who was from the United States. Angelo Hill played at Washington State in the ‘70s.
“He was tough, bro,” Fearne said. “He was very, very demanding, but I liked that, and he gave me an opportunity to understand what the game is and how hard it is to win and have success. I also had a coach in my hometown in New Zealand who gave me an opportunity to come to the U.S. and play high school and college basketball. Those two have been instrumental in me loving the game.”
In 1997, Fearne graduated from Mayville State in North Dakota with a degree in business administration after playing for Western Wisconsin Technical College, Mid-State Tech in Wisconsin and Mayville. A year later, in 1998, he was playing professionally in Australia.
As a pro, Fearne helped Cairns Marlins win two national championships. And after playing for seven years, his coach asked Fearne if he wanted to try coaching himself.
Fearne eventually spent seven seasons as an assistant coach in Australia and then was a head coach for 14 years, including nine with Cairns Taipans, which plays in the top basketball league in Australia, the NBL.
Fearne’s teams with Cairns Taipans won 264 games and made three playoff appearances. In 2011 and 2015, his team made the NBL Finals. In 2017, he led the team to the semifinals before he was hired to coach at Charlotte as an assistant.
Fearne said one thing helped him in his journey.
“Your family support is hugely important,” Fearne said. “I’ve got a son (Tyler) on the team (at Charlotte) and I’ve got a daughter (Jasmine) who plays at Bowling Green. We’re a basketball family. That’s all we talk about and sometimes that’s draining. But I love the game. Am I obsessed with it like some people can get to? I’m not sure I’m at that level. I have the ability to disconnect when I need to because I think that’s important.”
So what’s next?
Hill gave Fearne a 5-year contract worth up to $750,000 annually. Hill said he knows the fans want a consistent winner, and a first NCAA Tournament berth since 2005. He believes Fearne is the guy who can take Charlotte to all those places.
But Fearne? He said he never lets himself think much further ahead than his next practice.
“Those are long-term goals,” he said. “Yeah, we all want to get there. I don’t need to talk about it. We know that. I’m very short term. I’m more worried about what we’re doing at 2:30 this afternoon. It’s hard enough as it is. So let’s worry about the little things. You do the little things really well, and you do them consistently really well with unbelievable competitive spirit, well, I think you’ll put yourself in position to have success. But if you look down the track like that you’ll get distracted.”
So for now, Fearne will focus on Thursday’s game and then the game after that. And so on.
Charlotte is in second place in the conference with a pretty favorable schedule the rest of the way. Winning the league or winning the conference tournament seem like possibilities, either of which could land an elusive March Madness invitation.
But Hill — and Fearne — seem pretty convinced that this all just the beginning.
Call it Charlotte basketball 2.0.
“The game has taken me around the world,” Fearne said, “and it’s been an unbelievable journey for me and I’m very thankful and grateful for a lot of people who have opened doors for me, and here I am today. Now, let’s keep it rolling.”
