University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Big East Bounty
September 26, 2010 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
Sept. 26, 2010
by Lee Pace
Memo to Butch Davis, Dick Baddour, Larry Gallo and anyone else with a hand in the Tar Heels' football schedule making: This September trip into the shadows of Manhattan works. It rocks. Three straight years, three straight victories. Rutgers, check. The University of Connecticut, check. Rutgers again, checkmate.
How about a return to West Point? It is exactly 51 miles from 59th Street at the base of Central Park up the Palisades Parkway to Michie Stadium in West Point, and many Tar Heel fans fondly recall their 1992 foray into the Hudson Valley to face the Army Cadets. Or maybe a home-and-home with Yale, setting up a visit to New Haven and the historic Yale Bowl, the 1914 neo-gothic venue that was the forerunner to the Rose Bowl and the Big House in Ann Arbor? Seriously, we need to play the Bulldogs every century or so. There's precedent: Carolina played at Yale six straight years from 1919-24, losing all six by a combined point deficit of 187-7.
The side trips into this nook of the nation are fun. Friday night, a couple dozen members of the Tar Heel travel party boarded a bus in New Brunswick, N.J., where the team was headquartered, and ventured into the Bronx to watch the Red Sox and Yankees in the new Yankee Stadium, a $2.3 billion edifice with good food (try the Lobel's steak sandwich, $15 worth of prime rib on a rustic country roll) but too many technical widgets (my senses were assaulted with approximately eight thousand advertising messages in three hours, and I can recall nary a one).
The people are interesting, for sure. One in our group had the spunk to wear a Boston cap into the pinstriped den but didn't dare celebrate the Red Sox' 10-8 win; we were serenaded for four full blocks leaving the stadium--"Go back to Mass-a-CHU-setts," railed a woman with hideous long fingernails and no manners. I thought it best not to argue and correct her that we were actually from Mayberry. One Rutgers fan sitting behind the Tar Heel bench the next afternoon had a boozy stream of expletives for the Tar Heel defense whenever it left the field; fortunately a cool head like safety Matt Merletti was there to counsel his teammates that woofing back served no purpose.
And the music, certainly, is terrific. Two years ago, we noted in this space the strains of native son Bruce Springsteen as one quarter rolled into the next, and this year it was a local product from Perth Amboy, just a dozen miles to the east, named John Francis Bonjiovi Jr. whose voice reverberated among 50,000 red-clad fans as the third quarter ended, the Tar Heels clinging to a precarious 14-13 lead.
Shot through the heart and you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name.
The shot to the Scarlet Knights' heart came from Bruce Carter, the Carolina linebacker who set up 10 Carolina points with an interception and blocked punt, made one unassisted tackle and helped on six others. That followed his 66-yard interception for a touchdown on this same field two years ago.
"I don't know what it is about this place, but I love playing here," Carter said.
As do his teammates. The Tar Heels escaped New Jersey with a hard-fought 17-13 win, their first of the season after consecutive six-point defeats to LSU and Georgia Tech. And though Carter's pick and subsequent return--bobbing and weaving, breaking a couple of tackles and underlining his colossal athletic toolbox--harkened back to this venue two years ago, the game itself had more of the flavor of Carolina's 12-10 win on the road last year over another Big East opponent, the UConn Huskies. It was burly, bruising and just enough.
"Going 0-3 would have been devastating for us," quarterback T.J. Yates said, "especially because we were making the same mistakes as we were the past couple of weeks with the fumbles and turnovers."
"This was a great opportunity to show everybody what Carolina football is about," said defensive lineman Quinton Coples, who had six solo tackles, three sacks and a batted ball. "I think we had a lot of close games that we probably should have won. We have a lot of pride and that's what we take into every game."
The 3:30 start worked to the Tar Heels' advantage as the wickedly hot day wore along. Though the temperature peaked at 87 degrees at kick-off, it felt much warmer on the synthetic playing surface in Rutgers Stadium. Coples took a knee on the sideline midway through the second quarter, huge beads of sweat covering his face. But by halftime the sun was setting and the visitors' bench, curiously positioned on the shadier west side of the stadium, and much of the playing field melted into the cooling and comforting shadows. It's good this wasn't a noon kick-off. The heat plays havoc with a squad ravaged by depth problems and forced to spread its personnel across the various special teams, which are heavily populated with safeties, corners and linebackers. It further tested the defense's resolve that Rutgers possessed the ball for 35 minutes, 39 seconds.
"We got gassed," Tar Heel coach Butch Davis admitted. "Our kids got tired. I think we played eight defensive linemen. We tried to keep guys fresh. If you can keep your best players fresh, you hopefully will still have them in the last three or four minutes of a ball game when the outcome is on the line. It was great to have Quinton Coples fresh and ready to go, Bruce Carter still out there playing hard. They made some huge plays."
There's nothing like a good win on the road to soothe the soul, especially one burdened by the recent inquiries into agent and academic issues surrounding the football program. A touchdown win over Maryland in the rain in 1992 ... 17 points over Syracuse in the raucous Carrier Dome in 1996 ... the total domination of Clemson by five TDs in 2001 ... they were all sweet and this one as well, though that's not to say Rutgers is knocking on the door of the Top 25. It's not. But Davis, his staff and team have dusted off the distractions well enough to overcome their personnel deficiencies and stage three spirited efforts. There but for the grime of too many unforced errors goes a 3-0 football team.
"I know we're building one helluva football program," Davis said in answer to a question about overcoming the short-term obstacles. "With the effort like what we got today, I think the future of Carolina football is very bright."
The adjunct of marquee names like Marvin Austin, Greg Little and Robert Quinn being sidelined is that other players have to step into the breach and amp up their games. Yates is playing well and Saturday allowed his first interception in 117 throws dating to last year, and it wasn't his fault as the ball bounced of Jheranie Boyd's hands. Johnny White has erupted as a force at tailback, using balance and power to supplement his immense speed. The offensive line didn't allow a sack in the second half. Merletti had a key interception late in the game, and senior tight end/H-back Ryan Taylor scored his first touchdown as a Tar Heel.
And one name not appearing in the stats book is that of Greg Elleby, No. 67 in your program and now a defensive tackle after an emergency transfer from the offensive line just two weeks ago. This comes after Elleby was moved from defense to offense in the spring of 2009 to help shore up the offensive line, wafer-thin at the time.
Watching from the sidelines Saturday, I was struck by the two faces shown by the senior from Tabor City. One face was intense and focused and reflected the proper animosity one shows toward his opponent on the football battlefield. The other was smiling and ebullient and simply happy to be playing a game he loves. Elleby made no official tackles Saturday, but his gap was the target of a quarterback sneak on third-and-one in the second quarter, and he snuffed the thrust of Knights QB Tom Savage, allowing Kareem Martin to nail Savage well behind the line. If you heard a guffaw or saw some arms being flailed in celebration Saturday, likely they belonged to Elleby.
"Greg Elleby is as good a team player as I've ever been around," defensive coordinator Everett Withers said. "He's done everything we've asked him to do. To me, Greg epitomizes what a college football player ought to be. I'm proud of him. He's a guy you can put in front of everyone and say, `Here's the model.'"
Those are the kinds of efforts that can help salve and salvage what has been a burdensome season for the Tar Heels. And a trip to the great Northeast doesn't seem to hurt, either. Yankee doodle dandy, indeed.
1979 Carolina graduate Lee Pace (leepace7@gmail.com) is in his 21st year writing about Tar Heel football under the "Extra Points" banner. Look for his missives each Monday during the season.
