There will be an in-state rivalry taking place on Saturday other than North Carolina-Duke.
East Carolina hosts Charlotte at 4 p.m. (ESPN+). The Pirates and 49ers don’t have the depth of tradition or the national rankings of the Tar Heels and Blue Devils, but the Minges Maniacs have the same potential to impact an outcome as their blue blood cousins, the Cameron Crazies.
One question for ECU is whether Coach Mike Shwartz can get his guys to regroup sufficiently from the disappointment of an 80-77 overtime loss at Southern Methodist on Wednesday night to compete in winning fashion.
That was Senior Night for the Mustangs and Saturday will be Senior Day for the Pirates, who could possibly seize on the motivation of winning the last regular season game for Brandon Johnson, Benjamin Bayela and Cam Hayes in Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum.
Schwartz didn’t understate the emotional impact of the SMU matchup in his postgame remarks on the ECU radio network. The Pirates had an 11-point lead in the first half and were on top, 65-62, with five seconds left when Zhuric Phelps made his first three of the American Athletic Conference contest to tie the score and bring on overtime.
Phelps had missed all seven of his previous 3-point attempts in Moody Coliseum in Dallas.
R.J. Felton pushed the ball up the floor and appeared to be driving for victory on ECU’s last possession in regulation but committed one of the Pirates’ 17 turnovers. He finished with a game-high 28 points.
The Mustangs extended an ECU losing streak to four games. Schwartz said his team was hurting — understandably.
“Regardless of the way the last few games have gone, our guys put every ounce of effort and heart and fight into this game, and I thought we played pretty well,” said the second-year Pirates coach.
In the course of a college basketball season, there are frequent opportunities for redemption.
.”We talked about that aspect of it, and we just talked about what resiliency means and being a resilient person, resilient basketball player, a resilient teammate and a resilient team,” Schwartz said. “We have to be that right now because that one does hurt. I’m not going to say it any other way or sugarcoat it. That one hurts a great deal. We talked about the basketball part on why we fell short. We talked about that last shot that Phelps hit and you give him credit. He was 0 for seven on the night and he makes a huge three to tie the game.”
Shwartz cited 21 offensive rebounds by the hosts as a factor that helped SMU overcome a disparity in field goal shooting. ECU hit 44.1 percent to 32.9 percent for SMU.
The Pirates had not beaten SMU in Dallas since 2012. The Mustangs move to the ACC next year.
49ers — the first time
Charlotte took a 67-52 win over the visiting Pirates on Feb. 3 before a sellout crowd of 8,201 at Halton Arena
Felton struck for a game-high 20 points.
The 49ers had a 42-25 rebounding advantage and outshot ECU, 45.3 percent to 32.7 percent.
Charlotte improved to 8-1 in the AAC at the time but are 4-4 in league play since.
Tournament seeding
ECU is 12-14 overall and 7-10 in league play.
The Pirates could potentially tie with Tulsa for eighth in the league standings but would have the tiebreaker based on a 62-57 win in Greenville over the Golden Hurricane on Jan. 7.
The AAC Tournament is next week in Fort Worth.
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