LEE PACE'S EXTRA POINTS: Heels For A Half, Then Wolfpack Explodes.

October 14, 2002 | Football

By: UNC Athletic Communications

Oct. 14, 2002

By Lee Pace

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Parsing the Stat Book Through Six Games.

Darian Durant gets taken down by the Pack.

You could turn back the clock five or six years for one glorious half of football Saturday, when the emotion and elation would cascade through Kenan Stadium as Vonnie Holliday or Greg Ellis or Dre Bly made a big play on defense -- a sack, a hurry, a batted ball, maybe an interception. The swagger was there for an instant as a Tar Heel leaped from the turf after pummeling an opposing quarterback. Is there anything as fun in football as the home team defense facing a third-and-short and converting, the Tar Heels cavorting off the field and the opposing offense trudging heads down to the far sideline?

Saturday against arch-rival N.C. State, a maligned and molested Tar Heel defense stood eye-to-eye with the Wolfpack's vaunted offense and, excepting a game-opening scoring drive, did not blink.

Donti Coats came with a sack.

Clay Roberson had great pursuit on a running play, stopping T.A. McLendon on third-and-short.

Clarence Gaddy shucked a blocker and nailed a receiver for a three-yard loss.

Jermicus Banks sniffed and destroyed a shovel pass on first down.

Dexter Reid streaked on a safety blitz and hurried State's celebrated quarterback, Philip Rivers, into an errant throw.

Kevin Knight dove for a break-up.

State went four consecutive possessions in the first half with just 17 snaps, 70 yards and six minutes of possession time. The home folks attired in light blue amid the 60,250 in Kenan Stadium were worked to a fever pitch.

"Defensive players feed off that emotion," end Will Chapman said. "Someone gets a big play and the crowd gets into it. I couldn't even hear the defensive signals being called at one point. Our fans were excited to see the defense playing well. They haven't seen that much this year."

"Our confidence was sky high in the first half," added Knight. "The crowd was into it, we were just out there having fun."

So were the offense and special teams. Offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill unveiled a superb play list of shovel passes, reverses, fakes off reverses and downfield throws at the seams of State's zone pass coverage, and, better yet, the Tar Heel blocking front played with precision and gave quarterback Darian Durant time to throw. The Tar Heel offense rode those successes to two lengthy scoring drives for 10 points. Dan Orner made his one field goal attempt, and the Tar Heel punt team was getting its kicks away against a vaunted State rush that had blocked four punts this season. The score at halftime was 10-7, Tar Heels.

"The first half was probably the best half we've played all year -- offense, defense and special teams," Carolina coach John Bunting said. "We were doing a lot of good things. We were pretty juiced at halftime, and I thought we'd come out and play even better."

They did for one series, scoring on the opening drive and taking a 17-7 lead on a play-action pass from Durant to fullback James Faison. Maybe the Tar Heels were indeed growing up. Maybe this was indeed a Paper Pack with a false I.D. of No. 11 in the nation after playing a cupcake lineup of Massachusetts, East Tennessee State, New Mexico and Navy.

Then the Tar Heels' dreams of an upset fell apart in a nanosecond.

Eschewing a passing game that had sputtered in the first half, the Wolfpack turned prized freshman McLendon loose on the corners and he ran wild, picking up 64 yards on four plays on a speedy scoring drive that cut Carolina's lead to 17-14. Then Durant fumbled while scrambling on first down following the kick-off, State recovered at the Tar Heel four, and McLendon hit the right corner for another quick score.

Poof. The bubble burst. The red-clad State fans seized the emotional baton. A malaise settled over the Tar Heel populace as State took control. Things got so quiet in the fourth quarter that Bunting's wife, Dawn, went from the coaches' wives' box in the press box down into the stands and began leading cheers from the platform in front of the student section.

The final: State 34, Carolina 17. It was not a pretty sight. "Once we got to running in the second half, it was like blood in the water," State tackle Scott Kooistra said. "We were the sharks."

The defeat was difficult for Bunting to stomach given his acknowledged disdain for the recruiting tactics of State coach Chuck Amato and staff. He and Amato, each a proud graduate of the institution signing his paycheck, have elevated the intensity of this rivalry to a level not seen since the Mack Brown-Dick Sheridan wars of a decade ago or the Bill Dooley-Lou Holtz stand-off three decades ago.

"We really missed out on a great opportunity here," Bunting said. "It's a very, very disappointing loss. The entire team is extremely disappointed because they realize the great opportunity we had to beat a team here at home that was undefeated and shock the world. We didn't do it."

Durant's fumble was the dagger in the Tar Heels' heart. Trying to dodge the rush, he scrambled for dear life toward the right sideline and appeared as if he were raising his throwing arm. The sophomore quarterback was under strict orders from Tranquill to throw the ball away, lose a down and not risk giving up a dozen yards of ground as can happen when he scrambles, as is his wont. But the ball popped loose and State recovered.

"I tried to get rid of the ball," Durant said, "and it just slipped out of my hands. It was a devastating mistake."

It was the kind the Tar Heels could not overcome given their collective age on defense and overall physical ability.

"Momentum swings happen in football, and you've got to be able to handle those," Bunting said. "Sometimes because of the youth of our team, we don't handle them very well. Until we learn to handle them, we'll have these types of problems and not be able to overcome them."

Rivalries ebb and flow and, for the moment at least, the Wolfpack has the upper hand. Amato has a year's advantage on Bunting in establishing his program. He's certainly more seasoned in the recruiting arena after spending 18 years at Florida State, one of the nation's finest procurement factories of schoolboy athletic wizardry. He's had an outstanding quarterback, Rivers, healthy and starting every game of his two-plus years at State. He rolled the dice in offering McLendon a scholarship last fall before anyone else, despite questions of whether the Albemarle prospect would be academically eligible. Amato is producing. But there's lots more in this battle to come.

"I want to build this program," Bunting told reporters last week, discussing the rivalry. "When we get our house and our program in order, it'll be an even better rivalry."

State is a better football team at the moment, no further discussion required. But with Carolina halfway through its season, there are plenty of elements Bunting and his staff can use as a foundation.

One of the problems the Heels have had in replacing nine starters from last year's defense is that a handful of older players have yet to assert themselves. Coats and Roberson are fourth-year juniors. Banks and Gaddy are third-year sophomores and garnered reams of publicity for their changes of heart just before signing day in 2000 when they nixed State for Carolina. Darryl Grant, another fourth-year junior along the defensive front, has rarely played. For the defense to improve, the older kids need to produce while the first- and second-year players -- the Chase Pages, Jocques Dumases and Kendall Highs -- are still figuring out what college football is all about.

That's why seeing Coats, Roberson, Gaddy and Banks make plays in the first half Saturday was encouraging.

"We were getting a lot of hats to the football in the first half," Bunting said. "McLendon was getting hit by one and two and three guys. We were tackling well. We were stopping them on third down. We made a lot of plays."

After playing aggressively and getting burned the first three weeks and playing softer and still getting zinged against Georgia Tech and Arizona State, Bunting and defensive coordinator Dave Huxtable went with a compromise stratagem against State. They wanted a mix somewhere between leaving the corners one-on-one in bump coverage, which had not worked, and dropping seven back in zone, which gave the QB too much time.

"We're not good enough to sit there and play vanilla," Huxtable said. "We've got to mix it up. We've got to play some press coverage on the corners, play off the receivers sometimes. We've got to disguise coverages. We've got to bring blitzers from different places. We've got to keep N.C. State off-balance, but we've got to pick our spots when we bring the pressure."

The Tar Heels did that well in the first half, particularly with Reid firing in several times to harass Rivers.

"We were able to get some pressure today," Chapman said. "I think that's why they didn't throw the ball in the second half as much. Donti, Tommy Davis, other guys did a good job rushing the passer. We worked hard on that this week and improved. I'm pleased with that. Rivers was not able to just sit back there for days and throw the ball downfield."

When Amato ordered offensive coordinator Marty Galbraith to concentrate on the run in the second half, however, the Tar Heels were not sound enough in assignments or strong enough and fast enough to get to McLendon and backup tailback Josh Brown. McLendon consistently sped around the corner or cut back across the grain from the edge for big yards.

"We didn't play good perimeter defense," Chapman said. "They got to the edges. We might have missed a couple of tackles. They were cutting back into the holes and we were overpursuing. We made progress today, but in the end not enough."

Bunting is obsessive about the details of X-and-O football, of reading and reacting, of using one's mind to augment physical skills. As the Tar Heels enter the second half of their season, Bunting and his staff will use every scrap of meeting and practice time to continue teaching and developing the Tar Heels in assignment and technique. Both areas showed improvement at times Saturday while back-sliding at others.

"We broke down in some of the mental things in running our offense today," Bunting said. "We got in bad positions at times and it really hurt us in our passing game, particularly in our sprint-out game. Darian faced some pressure he should not have faced. We should have had guys protecting the perimeter. Mental breakdowns severely hurt our offense in the second half.

"On defense the big plays were the perimeter plays where we did not get the support pattern down. Somebody's going to be free, somebody's got to make a one-on-one tackle. A few times we had a guy there and he did not make the play."

But it sure was fun there for a while on a picture-perfect day for football, with the stadium chock full of blue and red and the pads cracking and the head coaches' eyes flaming and their arms flailing. Best to settle in for a fascinating ride as this story plays out over the coming years.

Many Tar Heel fans enjoyed Lee Pace's FANStore and assorted other locations on Franklin Street. To order by phone, call (800) 554-6862.

Extra Points will be published 16 times during the 2002-03 subscription cycle -- on the Mondays following 12 regular-season games, in addition to pre-season, bowl/post-season, recruiting and spriing practice issues. Subscriptions are $30 per year, payable by check, money order or Visa/MC. The newsletter is available in its entirety each week at no charge right here at TarHeelBlue.com.

Lee Pace, Carolina '79
Editor & Publisher
101-A Aberdeen Dr.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 933-2082 | lpace@nc.rr.com