University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Tar Heels Show Passion In Loss To OU
August 26, 2001 | Football
Aug. 26, 2001
By Adam Lucas
TarHeelBlue.com
NORMAN, OK--With seven minutes left in the fourth quarter and Oklahoma holding a 41-27 lead, there were players bouncing up and down on the North Carolina sideline.
Stop right there. Take that snapshot and mark it Exhibit A in the file of, "How John Bunting Has Made a Difference."
Despite having endured perhaps the worst 11 minutes of football in school history, 75,000 rabid maroon-wearing Sooners, and 99-degree temperatures, the Tar Heels were still excited about playing football.
Beyond the score and beyond the impressive defensive performance, that's what will be taken from this game. For years, fans have been clamoring for the passion to return to Carolina football.
On the plains of Oklahoma, where it's so flat you can see your destination about an hour before you get there, it returned.
It's been easy in the preseason to hear players talk about increased conditioning and a better strength program and blow it off as the usual new-coach-in-town talk. Saturday night, it wasn't just talk. It was physically evident.
The players noticed.
"There was definitely more life amongst the guys," said senior linebacker David Thornton, who had a fantastic game. "That's what we pushed for all summer. We want to play all 60 minutes. I credit our strength program for the hard work they put in, and that helps you mentally when you know you're not tired."
The defense should've have been tired after one of the most bizarre halves in recent memory. Carolina won the time of possession battle and got five first downs to OU's seven. But they still went into halftime trailing 41-14.
Most of the blame belonged to a first quarter that looked like an instructional video for all the ways a team can score a touchdown. Here's Rocky Calmus running back a fumble. There's Antwone Savage running back a kickoff.
"That was the longest first quarter of my life," Bunting said. "I didn't think it was going to end. I thought maybe they were adding time to the clock."
The irony of the half--and the game--was that despite the high points total, Carolina's defense played outstanding football. New Sooner quarterback Nate Hybl completed 20-of-29 passes, but those 20 completions led to only 152 yards, and several of them were on flare passes to his running backs. Tailbacks Quentin Griffin and Renaldo Works accounted for 11 of his 20 completions.
Defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta and the Tar Heels seemed content to give up the underneath patterns in exchange for blanket coverage on receivers running deep routes. The scheme worked.
"Our defensive coordinator had the game plan down pat," Waddell said. "We couldn't ask for anything more. Everything we went over in practice, they did it. Every little thing. The scheme was awesome."
Bunting has spent most of the preseason talking about how the Tar Heels weren't going to Norman looking for moral victories. That was much easier to say in the calm of preseason practice than it was in the middle of 75,000 fans who filled the streets outside the stadium more than two hours before game time.
With Oklahoma leading 41-7, there weren't many victories left to play for other than moral victories. And after the game, you could almost see a smile playing behind the no-nonsense Bunting's eyes as he realized that his team hadn't given up.
"I picked up on the fact that this football team had made a commitment to each other to lay it on the line and play hard," he said. "Those guys just kept playing, and that's what we talked about at halftime."
But the task now is to apply that intensity to all four quarters of the game. As the players grabbed their postgame pizza and Gatorade late Saturday night in a torrential thunderstorm that developed just before the end of the game, most looked at least somewhat pleased with the effort against the Sooners.
Unfortunately, the record book still shows the Tar Heels at 0-1. They'll have to better that mark next week at Maryland, a game that should show Bunting just how much this team has learned.
"I think they grew up some," he said. "But we'll only be able to measure how much by the way we play against Maryland."
ALSO BY ADAM LUCAS
Adam Lucas is the co-publisher of Basketball America. He is a lifelong observer of UNC sports and can be reached at JAdamLucas@aol.com.
