CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Charlotte 49ers women's basketball team is headed to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in program history, and for the first time since 2009.
The Niners enter the tournament as a 14 seed and will face 3 seed Indiana in the opening round.
"From the beginning, we were expected to win Conference USA. We went through a lot of ups and downs throughout the season. But the one thing you know, if you watch us as a team, we continue to get better," 49ers women's head basketball coach Cara Consuegra said.
Charlotte won both the Conference USA regular-season title, as well as the C-USA tournament championship. On top of that, the Niners head into the tourney having just two losses in February and March combined.
"That's what you want. As a coach, you want to continually improve. You want to be getting better going into March, and then you want to get to march and be playing your best basketball and I truly believe that that's what we're doing," Consuegra said. "And like I said, we're excited for this opportunity. But we also know that we've earned it and we belong."
The Niners will lean on their veteran players, including C-USA player of the year and tournament MVP Octavia Jett-Wilson.
"Like Coach said, we deserve to be there and I think we've been proving that since I have been here you know, but we never got a chance. So now that we're finally getting a chance, I definitely think we're gonna take it and we're gonna run with and you know, prove to everything that you know, of course we deserve to be here and that you know, we put in just as much work as all these other teams that are ranked," 49ers guard Octavia Jett-Wilson said.
Charlotte will face Indiana on Saturday, March 19 at 1:30 p.m. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2.
Contact Ashley Stroehlein at astro@wcnc.com and follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.