University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: One And Counting
October 18, 2010 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
Oct. 18, 2010
by Lee Pace
Butch Davis was winding down his post-game press briefing Saturday night when the obligatory question popped up about The Streak, The Curse, The Scourge, The Affliction, The Troubles--pick your name for this irksome and mystifying 29-year dry spell for Tar Heel football at the University of Virginia. Interest rates were 16 percent, a California techie named Steve Jobs was still noodling around with something called the Macintosh computer, and Kim Carnes spent two months atop the Billboard charts with Bette Davis Eyes the last time the Tar Heels won in this house of horrors.
At first, Davis delivered a line from Coach-Speak 101: "We didn't mention it all week, it was no big deal," Davis said.
Then, he followed with some feeling and acknowledgement that coaches from Crum to Bunting, players from Fuller to Nicks had ventured into the Blue Ridge Mountains and suffered a kaleidoscope of losses: "But to put it in perspective, there's a lot of people who've put on that blue helmet and that blue jersey who've come up here and gotten their hearts broken," Davis said. "A lot of people are happy tonight."
Happy, indeed after this 44-10 landslide of a win. Carolina bolted from the gate with an 81-yard score by Dwight Jones on the first play from scrimmage, speared five interceptions and was never challenged in collecting its fourth straight win. The Heels' point production against Virginia was their highest number since Choo Choo Justice's team notched 49 points exactly sixty-four years ago.
The mid-1980s Tar Heels are jolly today. They lost by three, two and three points, respectively, as the balance of power was shifting away from Dick Crum's program to that of Cavalier football savior, George Welsh.
The mid-1990s Tar Heels are ecstatic. They lost by a mere touchdown in 1993, thanks to a muffed punt and whiffed chip-shot field goal, were hammered one year later by 24 points and then imploded in the final quarter in 1996. That was the infamous 20-17 loss that, at the time, felt like the end of the world and, upon further reflection 14 years later, still does.
And the 21st century Tar Heels are blissful as well. They've given up big leads (21-0 at halftime in 2002) and late leads (13-6 with two minutes to play in 2008). They've been slobber-knockered in 2004 (549 Virginia yards of offense and a 49-10 third-quarter lead) and gut-punched in 2006 (the listless effort on prime-time TV that precipitated the John Bunting firing).
There's been bad luck over these three decades--Deunta Williams' tip of Virginia's game-tying extra point two years ago that still found its way through the uprights. There've been unfortunate accidents--Mack Brown walked off the field in 1994 with a black eye, thanks to a down-marker that popped his face. And there've been bad manners--from Virginia students assaulting the Carolina bench with liquor bottles in '96 to the Cavalier band's encroachment of the Tar Heel bench area before halftime Saturday, prompting strong words between Carolina team officials and Virginia's band director.
One night and one game do not a salve for three decades make, but it's warm and fuzzy for the moment in any event.
"It's an incredible feeling to beat these guys up here, and to beat them decisively," tackle Mike Ingersoll said.
"One of the things we tried to do this week was not think about [the streak] that much," quarterback T.J. Yates added. "In past years we might have put too much emphasis on having to win this game."
The emphasis for the Tar Heels this week came from continuing to build on an improved running game led by senior tailback Johnny White and hope that the ground game's effectiveness the last two weeks would open up the passing game downfield. Check. Yates hit 17-of-22 passes, including four shots for 40 yards or more, and Jones caught seven balls for 198 yards. Carolina punted only twice and lost but one fumble (that's one turnover in three weeks, folks).
"I told T.J. if he could come out with a Drew Brees-type game, with unbelievable intensity and focus, there was no reason he couldn't complete every pass--every single throw," offensive coordinator John Shoop said last week. "That's what I want--one hundred percent. I think we can hit one deep and I think we can go underneath."
The focus continued to the defensive side of the ball in developing some stunts and games for the down linemen--a position dismantled by injuries and off-the-field issues--in hopes they could better pressure the quarterback. Check as well. Carolina sacked Virginia QB Marc Verica twice and had six tackles-for-loss, and two linebackers and one end picked off passes.
"Everett Withers and the whole defensive coaching staff have done an absolutely remarkable job defensively given all the things they've had to deal with," Davis said. "Our guys just show up like junkyard dogs every week and bring their hard hat and go to work."
The one black eye on the Tar Heels' side of the ledger remains special teams. Casey Barth was perfect on three field goals, but two of his kick-offs went out-of-bounds, giving Virginia generous field position at the 40 yard-line, and Carolina's kick-off coverage otherwise was abysmal. C.J. Feagles' two punts traveled under 35 yards average.
The Tar Heels led 27-3 late in the first half, but Barth set the Wahoos up with an errant kick-off and they drove 60 yards in eight plays for their one touchdown and a dollop of momentum. Given that teams occasionally lose interest and focus when leading big ... given that anything bad can and does happen to the Heels in Charlottesville ... and Davis was understandably cautious at halftime.
"We kept the pressure on them," Davis said. "It was critically important for us to come back out in the third quarter and re-establish control of the game. I felt like we did that."
Three times in the second half Virginia thrust inside the Tar Heel 10, but the defense maintained its bearings, held on downs or with an interception and celebrated on the sidelines as if it had been a key stop in a nip-and-tuck game.
"Every time they got close, we just said, `They are not going to get into this end zone,'" safety Da'Norris Searcy said. "We still had a lot of fight at halftime. No way were we going to let up."
Eventually the Tar Heel cushion became so padded that everyone in Carolina blue could breathe easier. So silly had it all become that Virginia this year designated the Carolina game as its "homecoming," an honor generally reserved for sheep at slaughter from some directional school, Eastern This or Western That. But the problem in Hooville these days is there is no one resembling Matt Schaub at quarterback or Terry Kirby at tailback, no Charles Way to crash a cement wall on a simple dive play or Germane Crowell to defect northward from Winston-Salem and pull aerials out of the clouds. This Virginia team might have had a chance if it had suited up two of its assistant coaches (Anthony Poindexter and Shawn Moore) and its radio sideline reporter (Chris Slade).
Good news for the Tar Heels is that Virginia's roster evolution over the last decade shows it currently has only three players from the state of North Carolina, and one of them is a kicker and neither of the others is on the two-deep. That's a pleasant development indeed given Virginia's proclivity the last three decades to harvest players from south of the border, particularly when assistant coaches Danny Wilmer and Bob Price were on the prowl.
Twenty-seven years ago, Virginia fans stormed the field and the Cavalier players hoisted Welsh on their shoulders and even evoked a wee grin from their curmudgeonly coach. On this night, Wahoo fans booed their quarterback lustily as the carnage evolved, and most had retreated for a bracer in parking lot when the final ticks rolled off the clock. Meanwhile, Tar Heel fans chanted in unison from their corner of the stadium, "We want Butch, we want Butch."
First-year Virginia coach Mike London gathered his team around him at midfield for an impromptu come-to-Jesus. "I told them we're gonna win around here," London said. "The mindset of the team I'm going to coach isn't going to forget. I told them to never, ever forget that feeling."
Imagine that: A watershed loss at home for Virginia against Carolina. Meanwhile, forgetting is something the Tar Heels and their legions of lettermen and fans can finally begin to do where the madness of The Troubles begins to fade into the red and gold hills around Charlottesville.
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace has chronicled Tar Heel football for more than two decades through "Extra Points." You can reach him at leepace7@gmail.com.
