The Charlotte player lofted a hopeful ball from just inside half court with seemingly no time left. The ball ricocheted off the top of the backboard and right into the waiting hands of Milos Supica who then laid the ball in with essentially no time left.
Various fans are rightly upset. Grant McCasland is rightly unhappy. Any coach from middle school to the professional ranks emphasizes that the defensive possession does not end until the defending team gets the rebound.
While the final bucket will be remembered for years, the bucket before this — the one that put Charlotte ahead — was also a put back. This fact is not lost on the staff and there will be an appropriate amount of coaching discussion about this in the day and and a half before ODU comes to Denton on Saturday.
Coming into this game, there was concern about a let down. There was a ton of craziness last night in CUSA so we can put this game into that context and not freak out about this particular team. The first week of conference play gave us some data on all the teams but we do not know enough to make any grand proclamations.
North Texas did not play well last night. There were far too many turnovers and the 49ers had too many second chance points.
Interestingly there were a lot of similarities between this loss and the last two wins. In all three games North Texas losses possession and allowed a potential winner.
UTEP: Turnover allowed a UTEP shot at the buzzer
UTSA: Missed the shot that sparked the De Nicolao attempt and there was a UTSA attempted put back.
Charlotte: Missed the FT that sparked the Charlotte attempt and there was a Charlotte put back.
If you play the game so closely then you risk being on the bad luck side. NT could be 0-3 and have played just as good of basketball as we have been praising them for. As it is, we are a little disappointed and get ready to play an ODU team that allowed Rice to come back and force OT.
