The Charlotte 49ers suffered their first loss of the season, 40-13, to North Carolina Central, Saturday at Jerry Richardson Stadium.
The loss snaps the 49ers season-opening two-game win streak and came in the final game of a three-game home stand in front of a standing room only crowd of 16,630.
In a turnabout from the first two games, it was NCCU that scored in each of the quarters. NCCU scored on offense, defense and special teams, and it won the turnover battle.
Charlotte (2-1) accumulated more than 500 yards of offense but committed a season-high seven turnovers. The Eagles (2-1) started the second half with a 100-yard kickoff return and added a 48-yard interception return seven minutes later to break open a 13-0 halftime lead.
"We just made too many mistakes," said 49ers head coach Brad Lambert. "We had too many turnovers and the kicking game wasn't as good as it needed to be. Those plays are hard to overcome. There's going to be some things in there when we watch the film that makes them see it's really a low margin of error to flip a script in a game like that because our guys were flying around and playing real hard."
The 49ers, who had outscored opponents 41-0 in the first quarter of their first two games, had a 37-yard field goal attempt blocked in the first frame and despite getting the ball back on a fumble on the very next play, turned it back over with a fumble inside Eagles territory, leading to NCCU's first TD.
"You got to give Central a lot of credit," Lambert said. "They came in here and played real hard. It's a real class group over there. They handled the environment really well and coach (Dwayne) Foster had them ready to play."