University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Troubles In College Park
September 1, 2001 | Football
Sept. 1, 2001
By Adam Lucas
TarHeelBlue.com
COLLEGE PARK, MD-Maybe the best gauge of how far it was thought John unting had brought this North Carolina football team is the extreme level of disappointment with Saturday's 23-7 loss to Maryland.
In a lot of ways, the game personified everything Tar Heel fans were hoping for coming into this year. Unfortunately, all the good parts happened to Maryland.
There was an efficient quarterback, Shaun Hill, who did just enough to win and didn't do anything that hurt his team. There was a solid running game led by Bruce Perry, who ran his way to a career-high rushing game. There was a fourth quarter explosion that left the opposition looking winded.
And finally, when it was all over, there was rookie coach Ralph Friedgen marching his team over in front of a raucous student section, taking a microphone and leading the squad in the fight song.
After the game, one wizened old Byrd Stadium usher shook his head. "That's the best game here in eight or nine years," he said.
Right script, wrong color uniforms. And all the momentum that seemed to have built after the second half of the Oklahoma game seeped out of the Tar Heel balloon.
"We were really positive coming into this game," Willie Parker said. "We've just got to try to build off this one the same way we wanted to off the last one."
On this day, it wasn't that a few things went wrong. It was that everything went wrong. The offense didn't even get close enough to try a field goal after Parker opened the game with what appeared to be a tone-setting touchdown scamper.
The defense provided all the highlights until they eventually gave out in the fourth quarter. On the first play of the period, a third-and-5 deep in Carolina territory, Maryland running back Bruce Perry stumbled to a first down against a Tar Heel defense that left Julius Peppers standing on the sideline.
When the Terps eventually pounded the ball into the endzone later that drive to take a 16-7 lead, the stat sheet looked like this:
Total yards: Carolina 198, Maryland 173.
Yards per play: Carolina 4.2, Maryland 3.0.
Passing yards: Carolina 88, Maryland 86.
Rushing yards: Carolina 107, Maryland 87.
For the second straight week, the statistics were mystifying. After the loss to the Sooners, John Bunting said he had never experienced a game with such an inverse relationship between statistics and the scoreboard. He certainly had never seen it two weeks in a row.
Last Saturday night, Bunting was almost glib in the postgame media session. This week the mood was decidedly more somber.
"At halftime there was no doubt in my mind we'd win this game," Bunting said. "But we certainly can't feel very good about what happened."
Two factors wound up crushing the Tar Heel hopes. The young offensive line struggled against the blitz, giving up four sacks and several other pressures. ut what no one could have guessed, in a game that was a key ACC contest for both teams, was that the most impressive player might be a punter.
Maryland's Brooks Barnard continually boomed 50-yard punts, and Carolina's offense started nine of their 14 drives inside their own 25-yard line. Asking an offense struggling to string together first downs to produce at least a 75-yard drive on nine different occasions is akin to trying to suck freshly-squeezed orange juice out of an orange through a straw. There might be an occasional good result, but more often than not you're going to get a lot of pulp.
"It's going to have to be a series of things that get the offense going," receiver Chesley Borders said. "It's going to start up front and then we will get going from there."
There's very little choice about that. Carolina travels to Texas next weekend, the third and final leg of their season-opening road show. As unting looked toward the future, his inherent proclivity to battle back seemed to pop through.
"We certainly can't feel very good about this," he said. "I don't think there's a guy in that locker room who feels good about what just took place. I know I feel horrible about it. But there are ten football games left, ten more rounds to fight, ten more chances to answer the bell."
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.
