University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Tar Heel Trifecta: Bell, Bowl, Bunting.
November 22, 2004 | Football
Nov. 22, 2004
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By Lee Pace
"If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you ... The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son."
-Rudyard Kipling
At no point did John Bunting ever lose his wits.
Not one year ago, not when Duke stormed into Kenan Stadium and plundered a morose and battered Carolina team with a 30-22 defeat. "That was embarrassing," Bunting said. "But I will promise you this: We will not stay down. We will get right back up. The 2004 season starts tomorrow."
Not in September and October of this year when he was written off at three separate junctures--following losses at Virginia, at home to Louisville and on the road at Utah. (Never mind those three teams have a combined record of 27-3.)
Not when he suspended a linebacker for one game for spouting off to an assistant coach; or a kicker for a week following an incident at a Durham Wal-Mart; or when he suspended three sophomores indefinitely for marijuana possession during the afterglow of a watershed home triumph over N.C. State.
Bunting never lost his wits when important recruiting targets told him and his staff they were interested in Carolina--but could not or would not pull the trigger of commitment with all the rubbish in the newspapers, from the podium of Corso & Herbstreit and on the internet message boards.
He didn't lose his wits at the final gun of the Georgia Tech game, a 34-13 domination punctuated by a Hilee Taylor interception and touchdown at the end; instead, he helped a fallen Yellow Jacket off the ground and offered a handshake. He didn't lose his wits when being peppered with salty questions from the news media after the loss to Louisville. His head was no bigger, his pulse no higher a month later when the same reporters and broadcasters hailed the Tar Heels' victory over Miami.
When others tried to make things complicated, Bunting kept them blessedly simple:
Preparation. Discipline. Teamwork. Patience.
And above all, stay the course. Building a quality football program is a matter of assembling enough players who are athletic, tough, mature, experienced, passionate, intelligent and unselfish. Those components will coalesce in due time. They always do if the leadership is in place.
The Bunting doctrine germinated in all its glory Saturday afternoon when the Tar Heels dominated Duke in a game not nearly as close as a 40-17 score would indicate. Carolina reclaimed The Victory Bell. It clinched a winning season and, in all likelihood, a bowl berth. It earned Bunting a two-year contract extension, giving him a foundation through the 2009 season.
All in all, a very nice afternoon.
"Look at what's happened last couple of years ... building, building, building," Bunting said in a kinetic post-game interview session which featured Carolina Chancellor James Moeser and Athletic Director Dick Baddour announcing the contract extension. "Now we've got the program going in the right direction. I said at the beginning of the season that toward the end, you'd be able to recognize that. It's a tribute to our kids and staff."
Moeser and Baddour provided Bunting and staff the ringing endorsement they need to finish their recruiting year and to herald a December of bowl preparation (the Continental Tire Bowl in Charlotte is expected to choose between the Tar Heels and Clemson for its 1 p.m. game on Thursday, Dec. 30, against a Big East opponent).
"We believe in this man, we believe in this program, it's headed in the right direction," Moeser said. "This team represents Carolina at its best."
"We had to change the culture, and John's done that," Baddour added. "We weren't tough enough, and we'd forgotten how to win."
Bunting certainly knows how to win--from his playing days as a Tar Heel in the early 1970s and his pro career with the Philadelphia Eagles. He won as a coach at Division III Glassboro State and as an assistant with the Kansas Chiefs, St. Louis Rams and New Orleans Saints. He's also won as a head coach in Chapel Hill, a fact seemingly forgotten amid the recent storms; an 8-5 ledger in 2001 included massacres of Florida State and Clemson and a victory in the always dangerous and can't-win situation of playing East Carolina.
"I've been around enough great coaches and I've had enough success that I understand what this business is all about," Bunting said. "There are certain things I can control, there are certain things I cannot control. I can control how our team prepares each and every day. If we're having a bad practice, I'll let 'em know it and we'll start over. This team has learned how to practice."
Both the playing and coaching components of the puzzle acknowledge the value of the CEO's vision and equanimity throughout a tumultuous two years and difficult, at times, 2004 season.
"People need to understand how important it was that there was never a sense of panic," says linebackers coach and co-defensive coordinator John Gutekunst, a former head coach himself at Minnesota. "Coach Bunting's coach here [Bill Dooley] was called `The Trench Fighter.' Well, that's what Coach Bunting was this year. He lifted the staff's spirits when we were down, yet he remained demanding and never compromised on his expectations."
"It's been remarkable how consistent Coach Bunting has been with us as coaches and players," says secondary coach and defensive co-coordinator Marvin Sanders. "He was no different with me after we'd gotten blown out at Utah than he was two weeks later when we beat Miami. He believed all along in what we were doing. We just had to continue to work hard at it. When the players know the coaches believe in what we're doing, they respond better. We were consistent with the players come rain or shine."
It's certainly a shiny atmosphere over the last month in the world of Carolina football: Last-second win over third-ranked Miami in front of a national TV audience; close encounter with ACC-leading Virginia Tech, only to fall short when Darian Durant is sacked on a crucial third-down late in the game; hard-fought win over Wake Forest; must-win conversion in front of a spirited crowd at Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium, a venue colored at least 50 percent with fans of the light-blue persuasion.
"After the Utah game, Coach Bunting talked about having a four-game season to end the year," center Jason Brown said. "He challenged us as players and as men. You have a turning point behind every huge loss like that. The thing is, where are you going to go, what do you do from there? We came together and molded as a team."
"Coach Bunting kept believing in us when no one else did," Durant added.
Most significantly, Bunting believed in a beleaguered defensive unit that had been whipped about the ears for two years and during certain games in the first half of the 2004 season. Through seven games, the Tar Heels were allowing 516 yards and 36 points a game, 6.8 yards a snap and a 44 percent third-down conversion rate.
But over the final month, those figures dropped dramatically:
* Twenty-four opponent points a game, and two TDs were actually the result of offensive and kicking-game miscues.
* A total-yards figure of 338 per game and a per-snap count of 5.1 yards.
* And a 29 percent third-down conversion rate on 15 of 52 snaps.
"We just kept preparing," says Gutekunst, who, like Sanders, joined Bunting's staff last winter. "We learned the players a little better. They learned us. The more we learned, the easier it was to get them in the right spots. As the season wore on, they weren't seeing things for the first time as much. They became better at communicating. They learned to recognize what the offense was showing. Who is eligible? What formation are they in? Are they in trips? Is anyone giving you a pull-key or a pass-run key?
"The way you become a winner is you become a pro. And I don't mean that in terms of being paid. My mom was a pro in the church choir. That meant she was passionate about doing something well. A lot of people depended on that choir for their enjoyment of the service. It was very, very important for her to be good at the church choir. It's the same with our kids. They became more like `pros' as the year went on."
Sanders believes stressing less scheme and Xs-and-Os and emphasizing fundamentals as the year progressed was another element to the defensive turnaround.
"After the Utah game, we had the off-week and we emphasized the bricks-and-mortar--pad level, attacking blocks, getting off blocks, tackling," he said. "Those things paid off the last month of the season."
One of my jobs watching from the sideline during games is to monitor personnel changes, and early in the year they were frequent on defense. But over the last month, players have settled into their roles, the defense has been relatively healthy and the unit developed some much-needed personnel consistency. Kareen Taylor evolved from being a tentative free safety in September to a quality player in November, icing Saturday's game with a 64-yard interception return. Tommy Richardson played all three linebacker positions and became a leader and coach-on-the-field. Tommy Davis was healthy all season and had his best year at defensive end. Doug Justice dropped 20 pounds and contributed solid games the last month. And can you imagine after being reminded of Hilee Taylor's speed Saturday what he might have contributed over the last month? Taylor returned to action in passing situations and notched sacks on three plays, speeding like the Road Runner around a Foghorn Leghorn at right tackle for Duke.
Many of these players have a lot more time in Chapel Hill. Late in Saturday's game when Duke was playing catch-up, a three-man defensive front featured all true freshmen--Hilee Talor, Khalif Mitchell and Kentwan Balmer. Each has enormous potential.
This stout defensive performance combined with the Heels' customary multi-faceted offense was simply too much for Duke. The defense had one bad series all day, that a quick drive at the end of the first half that allowed the Blue Devils their only offensive score. Duke gained only 234 yards of offense and made just one of 14 conversions on third down. The Tar Heel ground game was effective, with Chad Scott running for 144 yards and two TDs and Ronnie McGill adding 95 and one TD. The passing game was modest but nonetheless significant as the Tar Heel receivers were generally sure-handed after dropping eight passes the week before.
When the final seconds ticked off the clock, long-time Tar Heel football advocate James Spurling had a dozen cans of Carolina-blue spray paint ready for the players to decorate over the royal blue shade added to the base of the bell last year by the Dookies. He also had a truck from his Eastgate BP service station in Chapel Hill to transport the bell back to its rightful place in the Kenan Football Center.
"Coach, we're gonna drive the bell right down Franklin Street," Spurling said.
"Beautiful," Bunting replied. "Just beautiful. You'll get some photos, right?"
Indeed. The 2004 Carolina football season will make quite a scrapbook. Included will be images of John Bunting standing reverently for Hark The Sound early in the year and being bathed in Gatorade Saturday at Wallace Wade Stadium--all the while keeping his wits about him while so many were losing their's.
