GREENSBORO – The North Carolina A&T men's basketball team is not all the way there yet. Four days after putting on an excellent defensive performance against Savannah State, Charlotte came into the Corbett Sports Center and shot better than 60 percent most of the night before coming away with a 92-72 win over the Aggies.
Sam Hunt led the Aggies (6-18) with 21 points on 9-for-14 shooting. Seniors Ahmad Abdullah and Bruce Beckford also scored in double figures with 11 and 10 points respectively. The 49ers (8-14) ended the night shooting 56 percent from the floor, but they had their stretches where everything fell through the net.
“The bottom line is we didn't guard tonight,” said interim head coach Jay Joyner. “When you're trying to change the mentality of a team, it takes time. We are going to be inconsistent at first. We had a great defensive effort on Saturday, and we had a poor defensive effort tonight. We have to decide what team we want to be as soon as possible.”
Charlotte put the Aggies defense to the test early by hitting seven of their first 10 shots to take a 21-12 lead 8 ½ minutes into the game. The 49ers cooled off a bit by missing three straight shots before they turned the offensive pressure up again by hitting four in a row including two 3-pointers to take a 34-14 advantage with 6 ½ minutes remaining in the half.
“They're a very good basketball team. They play in a very good league, but I think we came out sluggish in that first half,” said Joyner. “We reverted back to some bad habits.”
N.C. A&T trailed 45-27 after the 49ers shot 60 percent in the first half. The Aggies seemed like a different team at the start of the second half. On Charlotte's first possession junior forward Denzel Keyes snatched the ball out of Curran Scott's hands to start a fast break the other way that Abdullah finished off with a 3-point play. Junior center Steven Burrough tapped in his own miss to cut the margin to 13, 45-32.
After a Keyes free throw got the Aggies closer, Adrien White scored the 49ers first points of the half, a 3-pointer to make it 48-33. The Aggies would score the next four points to get within 11 and had a chance to cut the lead under 10 twice, but turned it over both times. Unfortunately those turnovers were followed by another Charlotte hot streak that produced a 15-4 run. The 49ers were 5-for-5 on the run to take a 63-41 lead seven minutes into the half.
“I thought they really tried at the beginning of the second half,” said Joyner. “I thought that was our time to get the lead down to six or seven points, and we should have but we had some critical turnovers. I thought that had a huge impact on that second half.”
Charlotte was led Joseph Uchebo's 21 points and nine rebounds. The Aggies we try to get defensive again on Saturday when they travel to Durham to play their arch-rival N.C. Central at 2 p.m.
