Charlotte 49ers basketball coach Ron Sanchez: 4 things I like, one that I don’t

Ron Sanchez, the new Charlotte 49ers basketball coach, inherits a program that is a true mess.

The 49ers haven’t made the NCAA tournament since 2005. They went 6-23 this past season. Sanchez will be the third head coach the Charlotte players have had over the past four months (Mark Price was fired in December; interim head coach Houston Fancher followed Price out the door earlier this month).

With Sanchez, the 49ers have hired the top assistant at Virginia under Tony Bennett as well as someone who has never been a head coach before at the college level.

The 49ers obviously need an extreme makeover. They think Sanchez – who signed a five-year contract - is the man to do it. For what it’s worth, I thought Sanchez “won” his news conference Tuesday on campus. I think he could be very good. Here are four things I liked from that news conference and a brief interview afterward – and one thing I didn’t.

First the positives.

The whirlwind courtship

Some would view this as a negative: Sanchez didn’t even tour the campus at Charlotte before he took the job. He didn’t shake a lot of hands inside Halton Arena. No site visit. Nothing. He bought the car, in other words, without taking a test drive.

New Charlotte athletics director Mike Hill narrowed his search quickly and interviewed Sanchez twice - the second time with Chancellor Phil Dubois at the Spectrum Center in a spare room on the day before Virginia was stunned by UMBC.

They hit it off and Sanchez eventually accepted the job after those two interviews, sight unseen.

Do you think that’s weird? I’m OK with it. I think sometimes you just know, right? It happens all the time in relationships and in jobs. I view the fact that Sanchez didn’t wait around, seeing what other jobs might develop for him in the offseason, as a positive.

“I was really comfortable in Virginia,” Sanchez said. “But I felt called to get uncomfortable.”

The Virginia connection.

Sanchez has the Tony Bennett-Dick Bennett system embedded into his bones after serving under both men as an assistant, first at Washington State and then at Virginia. There’s a reason every ACC team has hated to play Virginia the past few years – they almost always lose to the Cavaliers, and to score a basket it seems like you first must scale a mountain.

I liked the way Sanchez knows that this is where his bread and has been buttered, and he’s not pretending that now that he’s got his own team that he will suddenly start running and gunning all over the place.

Said Sanchez: “I was hired to bring what Virginia had. ...I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t provide that. If they wanted something else, they would have gone to a different school.”

The reality lesson.

Sanchez doesn’t make any bones about the fact this won’t be easy. A 13-year NCAA tournament drought means that the 49ers struggle in recruiting, because what player wants to come to a school where it’s very likely you will never play in college basketball’s showcase.

“With each passing year,” said UNC Charlotte chancellor Philip Dubois, “it becomes more difficult to attract young men who see as one of their personal goals playing in the NCAA tournament.”

When he introduced Sanchez, Hill said no matter who he talked to he couldn’t find anyone who would say a bad word about the coach.

The reality is that’s about to change no matter how great Sanchez turns out to be. A lead assistant is sheltered from the storm – no one is going to blame Sanchez for No. 16 UMBC upsetting Virginia. Bennett gets the heat for that. Wait until Sanchez hits his first five-game losing streak – the second-guessing will inevitably begin.

But it sounds like Sanchez knows what he is getting into. “This isn’t going to be a smooth ride,” he said. “We are going to go through some troubled times.”

The tears.

There was an unusual 12-second pause near the beginning of Sanchez’s news conference when he had to fight back tears when he mentioned his wife, Tara, and all she had done to help his career. They have two young children, and she’s a former basketball coach herself. It is Tara who shoulders the parenting load when Sanchez goes out to recruit – and in this job, he will be on the road all the time. I thought it was a touching moment, and one that hopefully showed a compassionate streak that will thread its way through Sanchez’s tenure.

One more note: People cry at news conferences a lot, although usually when they are retiring. I haven’t seen many cry when they get hired – although Dave Gettleman did when he was hired as Carolina’s general manager. And in that case he was talking about his mother-in-law.

And what I didn’t like…

The only thing that hit me wrong: Sanchez was vague. Very vague.

The coach wouldn’t offer a one-year plan, three-year plan, a five-year plan or a single goal of any type other than “locking arms” with his players and getting better at each practice. It sounded a little too much like Alan Major - the last assistant at a high-profile university that tried (and failed) at the 49ers’ head-coaching job.

I understand you don’t want to say you’re going to win an NCAA title at the opening newsconference. That’d be ridiculous. Panthers owner Jerry Richardson proclaimed in the aftermath of getting his team in 1993 that Carolina would win a Super Bowl in 10 years, and that one haunted him for years.

But geez, tell people you’re going to compete for conference championships and NCAA bids. Or that you want to have a winning record. Or that you want 100 percent of your players to graduate. Or something. Give the 49ers faithful hope whenever you can – because they have been casting about in the wilderness for a long, long time.

This story was originally published March 28, 2018 at 5:15 PM with the headline "Charlotte 49ers basketball coach Ron Sanchez: 4 things I like, one that I don’t."