University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: West End Zone Curse Continues
October 19, 2002 | Football
 |
Oct. 19, 2002
By Adam Lucas
For the record, it's just a normal end zone.
After Saturday's events, the only thing to do was to closely examine the West end zone of Scott Stadium, where a disproportionate number of bad things seem to happen to Carolina football. It was in that end zone that UVA's Antwan Harris picked off a Chris Keldorf pass in 1996, turning around the momentum of the game, and it was near that end zone that Sam Aiken inexplicably dropped the ball Saturday afternoon at the two-yard line.
It wasn't just that Aiken -- of all Carolina's receivers, the least likely to fumble -- dropped the ball. It was the way the ball bounced after being dropped. Have you ever seen a football bounce that way before? Footballs simply don't bounce straight up and down. They take crazy caroms, hit sharp angles. By all rights, the ball should have zipped out of bounds after hitting the turf. This ball didn't. This ball just played dead, like it had been dribbled on one of the famed Boston Garden dead spots, and naturally the Cavaliers were there to jump on it.
"We can't turn the ball over when we're on our way to go in and score another touchdown," John Bunting said after the game. It's now happened twice in four weeks, and both times the opponents -- Georgia Tech and Virginia -- have taken the turnover and zipped down the field for a touchdown. Two different ACC games, two different 14-point turnarounds. Too much to overcome for a team that is still trying to find out how to win.
That's the type of thing that happens to Carolina in Charlottesville and has for the past two decades. Things that don't make sense go on at Scott Stadium. Even the bands are head-shakers -- Ohio University's booty-shaking band was the pregame and halftime entertainment Saturday. It took Carolina a full 25 years to build a three-touchdown lead at Virginia and just 16 minutes to cough it away.
There were some positives, most notably Mahlon Carey's 67 yards on 15 carries. Carey became the latest member of an impressive Tar Heel group of talent that has come off a redshirt year with less than half the season remaining, including Jason Stanicek and Adam Metts.
"I'm excited about [Carey]," Bunting said. "He's a big runner and he's a tough runner."
Toughness is something that will be sorely needed in Chapel Hill as the Heels try to gather themselves before a trip to Winston-Salem to face Wake Forest and the Deacons' imposing running game. The book is out on Carolina across the ACC, and they're going to see plenty of second-half rushing attempts over the next month.
They're also going to have to find a way to sustain momentum for four full quarters. Much of the postgame talk was about the opening of the second half, when Virginia's Marquis Weeks ran the kickoff back 100 yards for a touchdown. But Carolina had successfully stemmed that momentum with a snappy drive back down the field, and appeared to be heading for a touchdown that would have made it 28-7 and quieted the tie-wearing Wahoo fans.
Until the end zone monsters showed up again.
Hence the need for closer inspection. As it turns out, there don't appear to be any black cats buried under the turf at the West end zone. It's just regular old prescription athletic turf, no goblins or witches apparent. A few empty liquor bottles fired by celebrating students still lay on the turf Saturday after the game, but none of them held a genie.
When the Tar Heels return here in 2004, unless the place is mercifully blown up, John Bunting would be wise to find a way to go East for all four quarters.
 |
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
