University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heels Battle Sun Devils Tonight
October 5, 2002 | Football
Oct. 5, 2002
Looking to end a two-game losing streak, North Carolina plays its final non-conference game of the season tonight at 10 p.m. ET at Sun Devil Stadium. The game will not be televised, but Woody Durham, Mick Mixon and Stephen Gates will have the radio call on the Tar Heel Sports Network.
<="" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/teams/nnl/?DB_OEM_ID=3350">Click here for a live internet broadcast.
The Tar Heels (1-3) are coming off a 21-13 loss against Georgia Tech, while the Sun Devils (4-1) dismantled Stanford last week, 65-21, and have won four straight games, their longest winning streak in five years. ASU has outscored its opponents 188-67 over the last four games while averaging 47.0 points per game.
"They're an awfully good football team, both offensively and defensively and in the kicking game," head coach John Bunting says. "They're very aggressive, extremely talented and very fast. We're going to have to be in our A game in order to compete with these guys."
Carolina, which plays three of its next four games on the road at Arizona
State, at Virginia (10/19) and at Wake Forest (10/26)), has not faced a
Pac-10 opponent since playing at Stanford in 1998. The Tar Heels lost that
game, 37-34. Meanwhile, Carolina has faced Arizona State just one other
time in school history, in the 1970 Peach Bowl. Bunting started that game
at linebacker for the Tar Heels and registered six tackles, but Carolina lost 48-26.
"It didn't take a real football analyst to figure out why we lost that football game," Bunting said. "We didn't tackle well on defense and we didn't capitalize on a couple of opportunities on offense."
Look for junior free safety Dexter Reid to help lead the turnaround on defense. Reid leads the ACC with 13.8 tackles per game and is on pace to shatter the Carolina record for tackles by a defensive back (118 by Billy-Dee Greenwood in 1999).
Meanwhile, Darian Durant is leading UNC's most productive offense since 1995 by averaging an ACC-best 268.5 yards of total offense per game. Durant, who has thrown for more than 200 yards in three of the four first four games, averages 238.0 yards per game in the air, good for second best in the conference.
