App State men’s basketball was back in Boone Friday for a rivalry matchup against the UNC-Charlotte 49ers, and graduate student guard Kasen Jennings hit a game-winning shot with 2.6 seconds left. Jennings led the Black and Gold with 15 points, and senior guard Alonzo Dodd was the only other Mountaineer to hit double digits with 10 points.
Jennings said in the postgame press conference that there was no plan other than just putting the ball in the basket on the final play.
“No play call. He just told me to go, and that’s exactly what I did,” Jennings said. “I looked up at the clock, and I realized I had time to work, so I went.”
The start of the game was less than ideal for App State, finding themselves in an 11-3 hole after just over three minutes of play. A 16-7 run, made possible by the Mountaineers’ ability to attack the paint, allowed the Black and Gold to get back in the game with six different players finding the bottom of the net over the next seven minutes of play.
Charlotte answered App State’s run with more of what was helping them to start the game: rebounding their own missed shot and kicking it out to a shooter to bury a 3-pointer.
49er guards Dezayne Mingo and Ben Bradford each hit 2 3-pointers in the first half, which led the team to a 7-17 mark from deep. The 3-ball for Charlotte, along with a staggering 23-13 rebounding advantage, allowed the 49ers to take a 37-30 lead into halftime.
With the Charlotte offensive and rebounding game beginning to take off, the App State side stagnated. They finished the half 0-7 from the field and didn’t score a point away from the free throw line in the final six minutes. Head coach Dustin Kerns knew something had to be done.
“We changed our ball-screen coverage and adjusted some things defensively to help our rebounding and just not get so extended,” Kerns said. “They had 13 offensive rebounds at halftime and scored 14 points off of those. So we did make an adjustment with our ball-screen D.”
The start of the second half saw the offense continue to run through Jennings, but the change in pace came from a rotation shift by the App State coaching staff. The starting front court of junior forward Chad Moodie and redshirt sophomore center Luke Wilson played a combined eight minutes in the second half as redshirt freshman and sophomore forwards Andrin Njock and Michael Marcus Jr. took the brunt of the minutes.
A seven-man rotation of Dodd, junior guard Eren Banks, Jennings, Njock, Marcus, sophomore guard Jason Clarke Jr. and graduate student guard Jalen Tot was the go-to down the stretch. A mix of old and young, the lineup outscored Charlotte 23-14 from 15:52-4:31 in the final period.
Kerns complimented his bench unit after the game, saying it was a “huge growing-up game for the team.”
The two teams traded baskets deep into the final minute of play, before Jennings got fouled on a drive to the basket and had the opportunity to put the Mountaineers up 4 with 29 seconds left. Jennings walked to the line, cool and collected for the front end of a 1-and-1, raised to shoot and missed it left.
Charlotte grabbed the rebound and made it up the court to set their offense as the clock read 20 seconds. They found Mingo at the top of the key for what could be the final shot, with 12 seconds. Mingo found a screen, drove left and found Anton Bonke for the easy layup to tie the game at 65 with nine seconds left.
Marcus stepped out to inbound the ball as the whole stadium looked toward the App State bench, ready for a timeout, but it did not come. Marcus found Jennings close to the opposite free throw line, and the clock started with nine ticks left. Jennings goes past midcourt, his head only looking at two places: the clock and the basket. Hitting the painted area, four seconds remain. He finds his spot as three 49er defenders swarm him. He spins and pump-fakes, defenders go flying past him as he puts up his shot with just three 2.6 seconds remaining.
Swish.
A wild Holmes Convocation Center crowd lost its mind as the 49ers called their final timeout. Their final play: attempting a 3-point shot by Mingo that just missed off the front end of the rim. App State won 65-63.
“I’ve practiced that moment so many times, just by myself growing up,” Jennings said. “I saw the time on the clock, and I saw coach, and he wasn’t going to call a timeout. It was just go get a bucket from there, and that’s what I did.”
App State men’s basketball hits the hardwood again on Monday as they face off against the Elon University Phoenixes at Holmes. Tipoff is set for 6:30 p.m., and it can be streamed on ESPN+.
