Wednesday, February 21, 2007

49ers sharp on both ends

PITTSBURGH -- Charlotte 49ers coach Bobby Lutz promised and Duquesne delivered Wednesday night. Lutz told his team in practice this week if it could keep its turnovers down against the Dukes’ frantic full-court pressing style, the 49ers would get several wide-open looks at the basket. He was right.
Time and again Charlotte made the extra pass to find the open player, and the 49ers’ shooters held up their end of the bargain. De’Angelo Alexander buried 3-pointers from the outside, but also was solid inside, where he made reverse layups and threw down a pair of nice dunks. New stat of the season: Charlotte is 1-0 when it has five or more dunks in a game (E.J. Drayton had two, and Jerell Jamison had one).
Charlotte didn’t necessarily trade offense for defense in this game, either, despite the high score. Charlotte held Duquesne to 42.9 percent from the field, including 30 percent (9-of-30) from 3-point range.
“With their style, if you don’t turn the ball over, (you get) unbelievable looks. We didn’t get as many inside as I would have liked, we got some,” Lutz said. “I was very pleased with our offense. We didn’t practice one set play either day (of practice) because we knew their style wouldn’t allow it.
“We had guys make the extra pass. Carlos played well. This is a big win. This is a big confidence booster.”
--- Jim Utter

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good solid effort this game! I know we wanted a better season, and we aren't going to the NCAAs without a MIRACLE, but hell, we can take this as a nice win and hopefully build some momentum to finish out the rest of the season strong.

Anonymous said...

Jim, do you follow recruiting. Wondered if you could do a blog on the 4 incoming freshman and who we might be looking at for the final spot?

How do we replace EJ and DA and even JJ?