Well, finally, tonight, we visit a Charlotte team whose historic run gave an entire city something to celebrate.

You may remember this.

College basketball is back, and for Charlotte, this season comes with a milestone worth remembering.

50 years ago, a group of 49ers took the city and the university somewhere they had never been before.

Their run became part of Charlotte's sports history.

Tonight, Carolina Impact's Chris Clark looks back with Gold Rush '77.

- [Chris] Long before Charlotte had the Hornets or the Panthers, one of the city's biggest sports moments was taking shape on a campus a lot of people still didn't quite know.

- UNC Charlotte was not in the city limits of Charlotte until the 1990s.

- [Chris] That's one way to say it.

Cedric Maxwell had another.

- You go out on 49 and then you in the country.

You are leaving, essentially leaving Charlotte.

- [Chris] In North Carolina, the basketball map already had its landmarks, and Charlotte wasn't one of them yet, but Melvin Watkins could see the outline.

- You know, they talked about and actually showed me a vision of what the campus was supposed to be.

And of course, I'm looking cross-eyed at that point thinking, "Yeah, one day, right?

Yeah."

I guess glorified junior college may be the best way to describe it, but it had its personality.

- [Chris] Cedric Maxwell would one day be drafted by the NBA's Boston Celtics, but when he first heard from Charlotte, he wasn't thinking about Boston, banners, or anything close.

Truth is, he wasn't even totally sure which Carolina sent the letter.

- Got my recruitment letter from UNC Charlotte and thought I was being recruited by Chapel Hill.

My first recruiting trip, and I went to the cafeteria, and we had breakfast that morning.

I said, "Can you go back and get some water?"

Said, "Yeah, all you can eat."

I said, "Where's the paper at so I could sign?"

- [Chris] And this wasn't a one coach miracle.

Bill Foster helped get the right players in the door.

Then Lee Rose came and let everybody know this thing was serious.

- First day I always remember Lee coming in and the line he gave us was, "Some of you guys can't play.

I need some scholarships."

That was his first line.

- [Chris] Before the rest of the country figured them out, Charlotte had already built something at home, first in the Mineshaft, later at the Coliseum.

- My four years of college.

We never lost a home game when I played.

When Cedric played, we never lost a home game.

Teams that came there came with a smile, left with a frown.

- [Chris] By 1976, Charlotte had done enough winning to earn a trip to the NIT, and in those days, the NIT wasn't a consolation prize you shrugged at.

- [Anchor] From Madison Square Garden in New York City.

- Can you imagine this country bumpkins going to New York City?

Oh man, we though we had died and gone to heaven, staying in the hotel, playing in Madison Square Garden.

Come on.

It doesn't get any better than that.

- [Chris] But it wasn't just the stage.

It was who they had to go through.

Charlotte didn't wander into the NIT championship game.

It earned its way there.

- We played against like Oregon, San Francisco North Carolina State and Kentucky, and we were right there to win possibly the NIT Championship.

- [Chris] They didn't come home with the NIT trophy, but they came home different, and when they got back, Charlotte was waiting on them.

- There were about five or 6,000 people at the little Charlotte Douglas Airport.

(crowd cheering) And I remember this Black woman coming up to me with a plate of cornbread.

"Cornbread, I know you love."

I remember that.

- [Chris] Before the big sports city image, the 49ers gave Charlotte something to rally around.

- I remember even as a kid tuning in and then they were local heroes.

- The basketball team at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, they're called the Mean Dream.

- And it was just the neatest thing that our UNCC was on TV and making it this far.

- [Chris] The next season, that confidence carried right into the NCAA tournament.

Central Michigan first, followed by Syracuse, and then Michigan.

Number one in the country at the time came in thinking they were just going to keep on moving.

- They were number one.

(Cedric laughs) They weren't number one once we left the building.

- [Chris] Every upset has a play where belief turns to blood in the water, and for Charlotte against Michigan, it came above the rim.

- [Anchor] (indistinct) you see that play?

- Chad Kinch, he comes from the right-hand side.

- And I think I gave him the ball and he went baseline and took off, and I'm like, I've never seen Chad do that.

- Our crowd just erupted and went crazy.

- We all were just stunned.

They were stunned.

We looked at their bench and they were like, "Ooh, ooh."

- [Chris] That win sent Charlotte to the final four.

Against Marquette, the 49ers were one basket away from playing for it all.

One basket from North Carolina, one basket from forever.

- I was involved in all these plays, and the last one, there's a long pass.

I grabbed the basketball.

I recovered quick enough to get there and block his shot as he tried to dunk it.

The ball was on the rim and he tapped it in while it was essentially goaltending.

- [Anchor] And now it's a matter whether it fell before the buzzer.

It is good.

- [Chris] It hurt then.

It still hurts now.

But losing that game didn't make the run smaller.

A school some people confused with Chapel Hill made the country learn a different name.

- I don't think anyone felt like they had lost.

I think everyone felt like, wow, they made it to the Final Four.

That's just incredible.

- [Chris] That's why it lasted, not because they won, but because of what Charlotte saw in them, a school, a city, and a team all trying to prove they belong.

- Can you imagine a little UNC Charlotte that none of the rest of the state knew about was one of the four best basketball teams in the nation?

- [Chris] They started the decade barely on Charlotte's radar.

By the end of it, they left a mark you could still feel on campus.

- We had our names on the back of those jerseys, and we had the name of the university on the front of the jersey.

That meant something.

- [Chris] Nearly 50 years later, those ghosts still have plenty of company.

Every banner, every memory, every roar inside Halton Arena traces a little of its history back to a group of players who showed Charlotte just how far it could go.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Chris Clark.