University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Hump
October 7, 2006 | Football
Oct. 7, 2006
By Adam Lucas
MIAMI--The hump is pesky. It's also a misnomer, because it's proving to be more like a Category 3 climb through the Alps than the little speed bump in a mall parking lot the name suggests.
This was John Bunting after Saturday's 27-7 loss to Miami: "We'll watch this film to understand how close we can be. We'll learn from this game how we need to get them over the hump in order to win a game like this. To win a game like this we have to play a heck of a lot better in terms of taking care of your business. You have to make the plays you need to make."
Carolina was barreling along, more or less humpless, through 27 first-half minutes. The recently embarrassed defense played significantly better than they have in any game other than Virginia Tech in 2006. The offense clicked on the one drive when it absolutely had to, responding to a 10-0 deficit and taking advantage of two important Miami penalties to draw within 10-7 with under six minutes left in the half.
Just like last year, the sparse Orange Bowl crowd of 29,621--perhaps a bit grouchy in a facility where one patron was served a bag of peanuts stamped with an expiration date in 2004--was restless. Just like last year, Carolina got the ball back late in the first half with the chance to provide a major momentum boost going into the locker room. Just like last year, the visitors had put themselves in position to battle for an important conference win.
Just like last year, the Tar Heels hit the hump.
In 2005 it was a dropped pass that turned the momentum back toward the Hurricanes. This year it was an interception off the fingertips of Cam Sexton, made all the more frustrating because on the previous play he had just made one of his better throws to Brooks Foster to convert an important third down. Carolina concludes most every practice with a session intended to mimic the two-minute drill, with the offense trying to post a quick score.
Sometimes it looks easy. But what that practice period usually highlights is how difficult it can be to cruise the length of the field against a top Division I defense.
That's what happened Saturday. Rather than, at worst, trailing by a manageable three points at halftime--and at best possibly taking a 14-10 lead--the Tar Heels gave up a predictable touchdown after the turnover and trailed 17-7. After Javarris James opened the second half scoring with a 62-yard touchdown run, the only drama left was on the CSI: Miami set.
"Momentum swings like that happen in football all the time," Bunting said. "We have to recover from those momentum swings."
The Carolina head coach has been criticized in previous games for playing too conservatively in the closing minutes of the first half. Saturday, with Miami due to get the ball first in the second half and perhaps sensing some blood in the Biscaybe Bay water, he chose to be aggressive...and will probably hear criticism for being too aggressive.
That's life as a football coach when the choices backfire. Play conservative, draw criticism. Play aggressive, draw criticism.
"Desperate times deserve desperate play," Bunting said. "We're not going to sit back. We're going to keep trying to make plays. When you do that sometimes you're going to have a bad one."
The only way to stem the criticism is the one thing Carolina has done just once this year: win. The reason is simple--after five games, the Tar Heels are still searching for their first complete performance.
Saturday it was the defense's turn to reappear. Other than the long run by James, they contained Miami's running game and created some quarterback pressure with a variety of well-timed blitzes.
"We wanted to blitz them to get them off their rhythm," said Larry Edwards, the game's leading tackler. "We wanted to be aggressive and go get it. That's the kind of defense we want to play. We kind of went back to our old school way of doing things. We went back to some things that had a lot of success for us."
In a season when Edwards coined the phrase "The New Blue," the Tar Heels have now returned to some of the defensive principles that led to a major defensive improvement in 2005.
"We did some little things differently," Edwards said. "We put more linebackers in the box. We let our linebackers have a little more freedom and that helps a lot."
Now the offense needs to make a similar improvement. The Tar Heels found no consistent ground presence and too often--approximately 90 percent of their third down attempts this season have been of the third-and-long variety--faced very difficult conversions to sustain drives.
It's hard to even make an accurate evaluation of Cam Sexton, who was described as "slightly concussed" after a game in which he took the hardest shots of his college career. Although he completed just 9 of 28 passes and threw 2 interceptions, he's also being faced with defenses eager to assault him in the obvious passing situations which Carolina too often faces.
The obvious solution is cracking the secret to the running attack. As the Tar Heels learned Saturday, getting over the hump with this offense must be done on the ground, not through the air.
Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
