University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: A Little Night Magic
October 15, 2013 | Football, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
Miami rolls in to Chapel Hill to take on the Tar Heels in the second-ever Thursday night game in Kenan Stadium. The Hurricanes are 5-0 and ranked 10th nationally. Carolina is 1-4 and winless in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But the last time the Tar Heels faced a Top 10 Miami team, they came away with perhaps the biggest win in school history.
It was October 30, 2004. Miami was in their first season in the Atlantic Coast Conference and 6-0 on the season. In his fourth season, Larry Coker had his Hurricanes ranked fourth in the nation and had beaten N.C. State by two touchdowns on October 23. Carolina, meanwhile, was sputtering. The Tar Heels were 3-4. Two weeks prior, they'd been crushed 46-16 by Alex Smith and Utah (a team that would finish 12-0 under Urban Meyer) and had a bye week before hosting Miami - on homecoming.
Miami's roster that season was formidable. There were a lot of eventual NFLers wearing the 'U' on their helmets: Frank Gore. Devin Hester. Antrel Rolle. Jon Beason. Greg Olsen. Brandon Meriweather. Rocky McIntosh. Baraka Atkins. Roscoe Parrish. In the week before the game, safety Gerald Sensabaugh gave the Hurricanes a bit of bulletin board material. Along with tight end Scott Brumett, Sensabaugh had come to Carolina from East Tennessee State when the Buccanneer football program was discontinued. Speaking to the media, he admitted he wasn't tremendously impressed with Miami. "It's probably the most simple offense we've seen," he said. "They're really talented, but they basically run the same play over and over again. In the games I've watched, they've probably run like six plays."
Now, a talented team can have a simple playbook. If they line up and execute with bigger, faster and stronger players, they can be as simple as they like. But Sensabaugh's comments struck a chord. They were passed out after one Hurricane practice and gave national radio host Jim Rome fodder for one of his takes. "Hey 'G,' I know this is all new to you. I know you're a former East Tennessee State player. I'm going to let you slide on this one. But you don't want to go there. Don't say things like that," Rome said. "I don't think that it's all that wise to be calling out one of the best teams in the country. Is Miami beatable? Absolutely. Just not by the Tar Heels."
In Chapel Hill, Sensabaugh's comments fired up his team - which may have been his motivation after all. "I think that instilled a lot of confidence in us that someone would be brash enough to come out and say that in the public, in the news, and kind of get that word out that we're here to play," left tackle Brian Chacos remembers. "We're not going to just lay down because they're the number four team in the country. I think if anything, [Sensabaugh's comments] almost gave us bulletin board material. It gave us bulletin board material that one of our leaders was going out on a limb and saying, you know, that we can do this."
It helped to play with confidence, because the Tar Heels were short-handed. Top two tailbacks Ronnie McGill (sprained ankle) and Jacque Lewis (broken foot) were unavailable. It would be up to Chad Scott to carry the load. Scott was Freshman All-SEC in 2000 but transferred from Kentucky after an ankle injury limited his sophomore season. With McGill and Lewis out, it would be Scott and fullback Madison Hedgecock running the ball out of the backfield. "Chad was always just a real personable kid," said Kevin Best, assistant athletic director for communications. "I think he was confident, yet there was also an element of just sort of being shy a little bit around the media. I think he was a little bit disappointed that he hadn't been able to play until that point."
The Hurricanes kicked off to the Tar Heels at 7:08 p.m. that Saturday night in front of 58,000 fans. After a great return from Del Roberts, the home team marched down the field and into the end zone. Darian Durant completed a play-action pass to Mike Mason for a 35-yard touchdown right over the top of Antrel Rolle (who was called for pass interference). The Tar Heels were on the board. Chacos said the Hurricane defense played sideline-to-sideline but weren't the most physical team Carolina had seen. "If you just lined up, ran iso, ran toss, you could just come right at them," he said. "They didn't necessarily like getting hit in the mouth."
But the Hurricanes hit right back. Brock Berlin hooked up with Lance Leggett for a 27-yard score to tie the game. Carolina then missed an opportunity to retake the lead when freshman kicker Connor Barth was wide from 39 yards. Berlin then connected with Parrish from 26 yards out to give the Hurricanes a 14-7 lead at the end of the first quarter.
It was Hedgecock who moved the ball into Miami territory on the next possession. He had three carries for 18 yards before the Tar Heels went back to Scott, who scored on an 18-yard run to tie the game. Miami then missed a field goal before Scott burst forward for 40 yards on a draw play. Durant hit Brumett to give Carolina a 21-14 lead.
Carolina nearly doubled up the Hurricanes in the first half. On third and goal at the Miami 2, Durant was picked off by Greg Threat in the end zone. Wide receiver Jesse Holley chased down the Hurricane, saving a touchdown with a tackle at the Carolina 38 as the half ended.
In the second stanza, Miami tied the score with an eight-yard Tyrone Moss touchdown run. After three quarters, the game was knotted at 21. Chacos said the team felt confident in a close game. "Our mindset was coming out running the football and getting the game to the fourth quarter," he said. "When you get the game to the fourth quarter, anything can happen. I think obviously our fans saw that."
On the first possession of the fourth quarter, Scott rushed five times on 12 plays, capping the drive with a nine-yard touchdown run. "We had known all along that Chad was a great running back from what he'd done on the scout team," Chacos said. "He was just meeting an opportunity. He just played out of his mind that day." Scott would finish with 25 carries for 175 yards and two scores.
The teams then traded possessions before Miami drove off its own 10 to tie the game at 28 on a Hester end-around with 2:25 to play.
Bobby Hundley, assistant director of athletic communications, was an intern on the sidelines on that night. "I remember thinking, why doesn't Miami run an end-around every play, because they had Devin Hester," he said. "He was faster than anybody anybody had, so if they just ran that play every time, they'd score every time."
Carolina would start on its own 10 and try to drive into field goal range. "To a man, we knew that we were going to win the game," Chacos remembered. "We knew that obviously we had played them tough, we had run the ball real well and we had done a pretty good job of keeping Durant pretty clean (Miami had one sack on the evening). We felt confident of being able to get into a hurry up offense."
Scott rushed the ball for four yards. Durant connected with Scott and Jawarski Pollock for big gains to get to midfield. Then, it was Hamlett who took a pass to the Miami 34. Hamlett caught another pass for a short gain, and then Durant took a quarterback draw to the middle of the field and the Miami 25. Carolina called timeout with four seconds remaining.
Durant and Scott had played incredible games. Berlin, Leggett and Parrish had been phenomenal. But it would come down to the leg of the Port City freshman who'd missed from 39 way back in the first quarter. "I remember Connor being out there on the field as a freshman and he was kind just kind of milling around," Best said. "The whole 'long-haired surfer boy guy from Wilmington' was definitely running through your head, because he was just kind of out there, happy-go-lucky smile on his face, no big deal. I think Bunting came up and said something to him, and he was like, 'Yeah, whatever coach. I'm cool I got it.'"
From the broadcast booth high above the field, Woody Durham told the story.
"Greg Warren snapping, Jared Hall holding. Connor Barth for the possible win. Snap. Spot. Kick away. High enough. Long enough. It's good! It's good! Carolina has won the game on a 42-yard field goal by freshman Connor Barth! Good gosh, Gertie!"
"At the end of the game, I was standing right about the line of scrimmage," Hundley said, "and as soon as the ball was kicked, I had to run because everybody behind me was running. I don't know what would have happened if he would have missed it, because we were on the field. So thank God he made it."
The Tar Heels had pulled off a monumental upset and afterward were quick to call out their doubters. Specifically, everyone who'd acted as if Sensabaugh had said something preposterous.
After the game, the loquacious Holley pulled an analogy from cinema. Specifically, Rocky IV. "They were Ivan Drago, we were Rocky, and they said that we didn't have a chance. Kirk Herbstreit said that we had no chance in hell of beating Miami." He then had some instructions for the College Gameday crew. "They can all break that pencil in three and chew on it, because we went out there and we beat the number two team in the country when everybody said we couldn't. Y'all report that to ESPN. Y'all tell them I said that. Jesse Holley."
The Tar Heels would drop a 24-27 heartbreaker to Virginia Tech the next week but win on the road at Wake Forest and Duke to become bowl-eligible. They lost to Boston College in the Continental Tire Bowl.
In the long run, the Tar Heels would go in many different directions. Durant is a superstar in the Canadian Football League. Sensabaugh recently retired after a successful career with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Dallas Cowboys. Holley too played for the Cowboys and is now a free agent and radio analyst. Barth, one of the NFL's best kickers now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is sitting out the 2013 season with an achilles injury. "That the kind of kick that puts a player kind of in the limelight a little bit on a national level, to where people can see what you're capable of," he said in 2012. "I think it definitely helped me toward my goal of playing in the NFL as well."
Years later, the game continues to resonate. Durham wrote about the game in his autobiography: "There were probably some dead spots in that broadcast, but at some points I found myself just standing there watching what was going on down on the field. There had been few moments like that in that stadium. You have to have a feel for when the silence speaks the loudest."
Nine years ago, a 3-4 Carolina knocked off a top ten Miami team on an October night in Kenan Stadium. It was a game in which a myriad of things combined to produce an improbable outcome. "Maybe it was because it was a night game," Best said. "Maybe it was because they were number four in the country. Maybe it was because nobody gave us a chance, but all those things sort of came together to have an incredible atmosphere at Kenan that night. Yeah, I think there's a little bit of night magic at Kenan."
