In a not so subtle attempt to keep the recent trend of at least a post a day alive, I will give a belated congratulations to the Charlotte 49ers for beating a (at the time) #9 Louisville last Thursday. Yeah, everybody has been beating the Cardinals like a drum recently with their current swoon of 4 loses in 5 games, but it still makes Charlotte 3 and 0 when playing teams ranked in the top 10 at the time - Cincy and 'Cuse being the other victims. I'm not sure how many other teams have such a gaudy record and currently I'm too tired to figure out a way to find out. Unfortunately, RPI tabulations only show a team's record against the current top 25 and not at the time they played. Still, it's looking like an excellent season for the 49ers.
The game was actually televised on ESPN 2, so I had the rare opportunity of seeing the 49ers play on national TV. During the telecast one learned how rare it was when Dickie V. said he hadn't been in Halton Arena in 8 years. Perhaps he was mistaken and was actually there 7 years ago for a certain Charlotte - Cincy classic.
The most shocking about the game is that while Charlotte played horribly, they just had so much more talent than the number 9 team in the county - though admittedly that rank probably wasn't deserved. If one lined up teams strictly based on their talent, it would be hard to convince me that Charlotte shouldn't be in the top 15 - and I watched a game where the man who set the season Conference USA record for three point shooting didn't play due to legal issues. They have two great three point shooters (Brown and Plavich), an athletic 7 footer who is coming around (Iti), two quality swing men (Basden and Butter Johnson), and a power forward who should become a star (Withers). If this team still had Rodney White, they would be amazing.
Posted by shs4 at February 20, 2004 11:40 PM | TrackBack