49ers face imposing tournament field, tipping off with Syracuse Wednesday

If there’s one area at which the Charlotte 49ers’ basketball team has excelled in recent years, it’s in regular-season tournaments in locations far from home.

The 49ers, who open play Wednesday in the Battle 4 Atlantis against unbeaten Syracuse (2:30 p.m., ESPN), have been mired in a stretch of mediocrity that has produced just one postseason tournament appearance since 2008, and that was one-and-done in the 2013 National Invitation Tournament.

But regular-season tournaments … those are another matter for Charlotte.

The 49ers are 8-1 in their past three tournaments, winning the 2012 Great Alaska Shootout and the 2013 Puerto Rico Tip-Off and finishing second in last season’s Charleston Classic.

Overall, Charlotte is 68-49 in regular-season tournament play and has won 18 titles.

But it’s the past three performances that are most striking.

Those tournament championships came under former coach Alan Major, who was dismissed last March after going 67-70 in five seasons.

Those titles – especially in Puerto Rico, where the 49ers beat 13^th-ranked Michigan for the championship – served as high points for each season, unrealistically raising expectations.

But senior guard Braxton Ogbueze, the only player on Charlotte’s roster who played in any of those tournaments (last season in Charleston), said playing well in these kinds of environments is valuable.

“You’ve got to believe,” said Ogbueze, who averages 11.7 points this season. “This is where it all starts. You can talk about all the other things and about what people say on the outside, but with this team and this coaching staff, you’ve got to believe and that when you step on that court, you play to win.”

The 49ers (1-2) will not be favored to win the Atlantis tournament, but they weren’t in Alaska or Puerto Rico, either. This year’s Charlotte team is composed mainly of freshmen and transfers, hardly the kind of mixture that guarantees quick success.

The Atlantis field is imposing, including two ranked teams – No. 10 Gonzaga and No. 13 Connecticut – as well as Syracuse, Michigan, Texas, Texas A&M and Washington.

“This is a great challenge, playing this kind of competition three days in a row,” said first-year coach Mark Price. “It’s going to really help us in the long run. It will help us see what kind of standard we need to reach as a team to play at the highest level.”

After the Bahamas, the 49ers’ schedule includes games against Davidson, Miami and Georgetown before Conference USA play begins Jan. 2 at Old Dominion.

“We start the gauntlet (Wednesday),” said Price. “We’re a work in progress. We’re figuring out different lineups and rotations, things that most other teams already have set. But this is going to harden us a team. If we can compete well in these games, it’s going to get us ready for the conference.”

This story was originally published November 24, 2015 at 6:10 PM with the headline "49ers face imposing tournament field, tipping off with Syracuse Wednesday."