The USF women's basketball team was staring into the abyss. The Bulls appeared headed for a second consecutive American Conference loss, trailing visiting Charlotte by 11 points with less than five minutes to play.
Coming on the heels of last Saturday's crushing one-point loss at Florida Atlantic, a second defeat could have sent USF's season into a tailspin.
But interim head coach Michele Woods-Baxter had the perfect answer for what happened next.
"I know we got down, but you know what? They didn't quit. Our players didn't quit. We talked about this after our last game. You know what? We're tired of losing. So even when we got down, everybody pulled together," she said.
"Everyone was on the same page and was like, you know what? We're not losing this game. And they went out and defended their butts off, and we made timely shots.
The Bulls backed up those words with a furious rally in the final 4:52 of the fourth quarter, capped by Carla Brito's contested shot with 2.9 seconds left. That sent the game to overtime, where USF finally put the pesky 49ers away, 66-60.
The Bulls outscored Charlotte 13-2 in the final 4:52 of regulation. Counting overtime, USF had a 26-9 edge in about 10 minutes time.
The Bulls are now 13-9 overall and 6-3 in the conference, But while pleased with the win, USF has to be concerned about two sub-.500 teams -- Charlotte is 9-12 overall and 3-5 in the American -- hanging so tough with the preseason conference favorites.
That's the price USF pays for its years of success in the sport.
"I just think coming into this game, we knew we needed this one. And we knew defensively we had to be better. And that's what was going to win us this game. So I think we just locked in defensively, and we did what we had to do," Briito said.
USF's three conference losses are by a combined six points, so it was good to have a close result go in the Bulls' favor. And they did it the old fashioned way.
"I thought tonight we really defended. We defended. We haven't defended like this for a while," Woods-Baxter said. We did a good job at sticking with the game plan on who we wanted to follow."
Could a game like this be the impetus for a strong finish leading into the conference tournament?
It depends on the defense.
"We have to be better defensively. We have to be because you look at our states in conference and we're se cond in points, we're first in assists. We're first in field goal percentage," Woods-Baxter said.
"It's our defense. We need to fix our defense, So even though our offense struggled some tonight, the defense stepped up and did what they had to do to win."