Atlantic 10 Conference Basketball

Duquesne vs Charlotte Basketball Recap

Duquesne 83, Charlotte 77

With less than two full weeks left in February, college basketball's regular season winding down. Teams sitting on the NCAA Tournament bubble will get noticed if they send a negative message to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee.

Looks like the Charlotte 49ers just got caught red-handed on Wednesday night on their home court at Dale Halton Arena. Their crime? A smash-and-grab job in which they broke the hearts of their fans and quite possibly snagged what could be an NIT bid.

Yes, it was a grisly crime scene in the Queen City, as coach Bobby Lutz saw his Charlotte squad crack and crumble in the face of NCAA Tournament pressure. On a night when the Duquesne Dukes - owners of a 4-7 Atlantic 10 record - traveled from Pittsburgh to take on the co-leader of the conference, the home folks in the Carolinas expected a routine victory that would keep the 49ers on track to strike NCAA gold. Instead, a stunning and staggering six-point setback has Charlotte on the negative side of the bubble.

This is the kind of loss that is hard to shrug off and impossible for the Selection Committee to remove from its mind. This wasn't just a loss to a mediocre opponent. It came at home. In the second half of February. In a moment of need.

This devastating defeat unfolded at a time when Charlotte was already reeling from a blowout loss at Duquesne and needed to bolster a portfolio whose only major non-conference win came at an injury-depleted Louisville squad in December of 2009. There are times and places when a loss is acceptable, and can be deemed as something less than damaging.

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This was not such a case.

Sure, Charlotte outrebounded Coach Ron Everhart's Dukes by a 46-31 margin, and 20-8 on the offensive glass, but rebounding margin - as basketball stat geeks will tell you - is in part a function of missed shots. Duquesne simply didn't miss as many shots as Charlotte did, and that's why the folks from the Steel City strode into North Carolina and walked away with a victory. Duquesne hit 48 percent of its field goals while the flustered and flummoxed 49ers converted only 33 percent of their attempts (22 of 67). When one realizes that the Dukes produced 22 assists to Charlotte's comparatively meager total of 10, it's clear that Duquesne received much better ball movement and distribution than the 49ers did. That's how a game is won and lost, and that's how rebounding margin can become very deceiving as a statistic.

Yes, this loss is as bad as you think it is. Charlotte is no longer in a position where it can simply avoid bad losses all the way to the NCAA Tournament. The 49ers will need to make some strong statements in the next four weeks, or they'll be ticketed to the NIT in 2010.

By: Matt Zemek
A10-fans.com Staff Writer