University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: VA-Voom
September 13, 2004 | Football
Sept. 13, 2004
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by Lee Pace
Once there was a Carolina football coach who stalked off the field on a hot September afternoon following a lopsided Tar Heel loss and proceeded to scald his players and staff in a cramped visiting-team locker room. The topics of effort and courage and pride were addressed at a very high decibel level. The concept that the season was long and this was one early-season game was broached. The coach saw some kernels of potential in his team; that it had yet to blossom in the early part of the season was a major irritant.
That coach was John Bunting. The date was Sept. 8, 2001. The place was Austin, Texas.
Over the next six weeks (counting one for a post 9-11 suspension of play), the Tar Heels did one thing they've never done (hammer Florida State), and one they hadn't done in nearly 25 years (pound Clemson in Death Valley). They also beat N.C. State, Virginia and East Carolina. That five-game win streak following an 0-3 start remains a blockbuster in the annals of Tar Heel football. It shows what can happen when that curious elixir of talent, scheme, focus, confidence, maturity and the odd good bounce of the football meld together in one's favor.
A similar scenario unfolded Saturday on the campus of the University of Virginia. Warm, sticky day. Game two of the season. Nasty loss for the Tar Heels. Searing oratory from the head coach on the subjects of higher standards and selling out on every play.
"Coach Bunting was pretty fiery," QB Darian Durant said following the Cavaliers' 56-24 victory. "It was well-deserved. I understand his frustration. I'm just as frustrated. I hope everyone will take it upon themselves to get better -- me included."
"We got embarrassed," tailback Ronnie McGill added. "He had a right to be upset with us."
"We were all upset with ourselves, because we're better than that," defensive tackle Jonas Seawright said. "We know that."
For those desperate to see progress in year No. 4 of Bunting's program, Saturday's proceedings fell under the category of "worst-case scenario."
The Tar Heel defense surrendered 549 yards at 8.6 per snap and caved like a sieve on the Cavaliers' first two possessions, setting the tone for the day. The Cavaliers scored touchdowns on their first seven possessions of the game. They punted only twice and didn't allow a turnover. Virginia coach Al Groh was gracious; this could have been uglier.
The Tar Heel kicking game, thought to be a strength in 2004, was an eyesore in allowing one kickoff return for a TD and another to go 93 yards to set up a score. ESPN rubbed salt in the wound by showing a replay of Marquis Weeks maneuvering through the porous Tar Heel coverage line for 100 yards and insetting a clip of him doing the very same thing two years ago against the Tar Heels to open the second half.
And while the offense had a respectable showing against a vaunted Cavalier defense, its inability to punch the ball in from inside the one on fourth down late in the first quarter was a major setback.
Asked afterward if his frustration level was at its zenith in two-plus seasons of losing football games, Bunting responded quickly:
"Absolutely not. This is the beginning of the season. I'm looking forward to next week. I'm just glad this game doesn't count as two losses or three. Now we've got to find a way as a coaching staff to get these kids back on track. We played very hard through training camp. Since we've been out of camp, I've not been satisfied with the way we've been practicing. That's got to change."
Before lambasting the Tar Heels, though, it's important to recognize how good this Virginia team is, how physically imposing they looked against their opponents from Chapel Hill. This is a recruiting issue. And you can't help but wonder how in the world the Carolina staff in 1999 and 2000 let Chris Canty and Alvin Pearman get from Charlotte to Charlottesville with nary a scrape.
Canty is 6-7, 290, chiseled, menacing, fast, powerful and was apparently overlooked by the Carolina staff while a senior at Charlotte Latin High in 1999. That is a fact the defensive end remembers and uses for motivation each year Virginia plays the Tar Heels. Pearman is 5-9, runs at the speed of light and plays tailback. He was thought by the Tar Heel assistant coach recruiting Charlotte in the fall of 2000 to be too small to be a force in ACC football. Bunting was hired that December and put one of his new assistants in Charlotte to recruit. They formed a different opinion of Pearman, a star at Charlotte Country Day, and made a hard sell for him. By then it was too late.
I have written also over the years in these pages about Virginia's skill in recruiting and developing offensive linemen and wondered why the Tar Heels in the 1990s were so mediocre in this regard. Extra Points (Oct. 30, 2000) noted that over the previous decade, Virginia had had 10 offensive linemen drafted in the NFL, Carolina two. The Cavaliers on that date had seven O-linemen on active NFL rosters, the Tar Heels two. The Tar Heels have improved in this vital category with a commitment from Bunting to excel along the offensive line and through the coaching and recruiting of Hal Hunter, but they still are not in Virginia's league.
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"Since I've come back into college football, this is the best offensive line I've seen," Bunting said of the Cavaliers. "They execute extremely well."
Bunting and Groh each took the head coaching reigns at their alma maters following the 2000 seasons. Though Groh came from the NFL to Charlottesville, he still had nearly two decades experience in the recruiting business and hit the ground running with his first full recruiting class that entered school in August, 2002. He played 10 freshmen that year, and three of those fall into the all-star category -- TB Wali Lundy, LB Darryl Blackstock and OT D'Brickashaw Ferguson. Bunting's background was the NFL as an assistant and NCAA Division III as a head coach; learning the nuances of recruiting at this level understandably took some time. His 2002 class included seven players who played immediately. There are some good players in the group -- Kyle Ralph, Derrele Mitchell, Tommy Richardson, Cedric Holt and Mahlon Carey among them -- but none has yet to garner a vote for all-conference.
Bunting & Co. have recruited well for two years now and already have 14 commitments for 2005. But there is no question they are playing catch-up in the talent category. It did not take any particular experience in evaluating football personnel Saturday to see that the Cavaliers were simply, across the board, finer physical specimens than their counterparts. Put them in those dark uniforms (deep, deep blue, almost black) with the swords crossed on the helmets, and it set an ominous tone from the start.
Still, no matter how good Virginia might be (Sports Illustrated suggests this week it could be a team ready for a breakout on the national level), that doesn't wholly excuse the Tar Heels' abysmal performance.
"I'm very disappointed in the way we played defense," Bunting said. "I'm even more disappointed in the two kickoff returns for touchdowns. That just cannot happen. Anytime you try to build some momentum and have two kickoff returns for touchdowns, that's just really poor play. It's poor coaching. We've got to get that corrected."
Interviewing nice young kids after they've just gotten their teeth knocked out is an unpleasant chore. After an elongated session with Bunting behind closed doors following the final whistle, a half dozen Tar Heels were brought into a room where they could dissect the day's events with the news media.
Jason Brown leaned against the wall in a hallway. "This is a cruel, cruel game," he said. "We call ourselves soldiers. But the thing is, if we were actually out there on a battlefield, after this performance, we would be dead."
Ronnie McGill took a chair a few yards from Brown and talked about the Tar Heels' inability to score on fourth-and-goal with the Tar Heels down 14-0.
"It was a zone play," he said. "I was supposed to go inside or bounce it out, depending on what I saw. They had leverage outside, so I cut it up, but they had people sitting there too. There was really nowhere to go. I just had to try to bang it in there."
Durant came into the interview room, took a seat and quickly drew a crowd. He was asked what Bunting had said to him and Brown, two senior leaders, during a discussion late in the game. Durant and Brown were sitting alone on the bench, and Bunting made his way over for a pep talk.
"He was just saying to keep your heads up, it's a long season ahead of us," Durant said. "He said even though the margin was pretty big, if we'd lost 10-9 it would still count the same. We have to learn from this one and move on."
Most stinging for the Tar Heels was their total inability to stop the Virginia ground game. QB Marques Hagans is a converted receiver with immense athletic ability, and the Tar Heel defensive staff worried all week about his ability to make plays in the running game. But it was the tailbacks and fullback Jason Snelling that pounded the Tar Heels for an average of 6.2 yards per running play.
"They had three basic runs they used all day," Bunting said. "What they did was no mystery. The belly play, the stretch play, the Power O. We knew what was coming. But we couldn't stop any of them."
So confident was Groh that his offense could grind out a yard at will against Carolina, he opted to gamble on fourth down and one at the Cavaliers' 30 late in the first half. Pearman picked up seven and Virginia went on to score to go up 35-10 at the half.
"That's bold play," Bunting said. "It's good for them, not good for us."
The opening to the 2001 season sets a precedent for a Bunting-led team to shuck off some early stumbling, to get its bearings and get better as the season progresses. Of course, he had some weapons on defense in 2001 in Julius Peppers, Ryan Sims and David Thornton that are not available this year. The embryos to potential stardom might be on the two-deep, but they're raw and green. They will get better as the year goes on.
"We've got two big home games coming up, and we need to see a lot of improvement in a lot of different areas," Bunting said. "I do believe that we can move the ball on most teams. But we need to give the offense a better chance to win by doing all the other things right when it comes to defense and special teams."
SQUIB-KICKS - One of the few positives Saturday was the passing performance of junior QB Matt Baker, who played the fourth quarter and completed eight of nine passes for 171 yards and one TD.
Send your questions about Tar Heel football to Lee Pace at lpace@nc.rr.com . Please include your first and last names and hometown. His Q&A column will appear each Friday during the season.
