Extra Points: Purple People

By Lee Pace

It began on a rainy Saturday afternoon in late November 1972 when a school only five years removed from its official name being East Carolina Teacher's College traveled to Chapel Hill and was pounded by what would, in hindsight, be the most successful Tar Heel squad of the Bill Dooley decade. Carolina cruised to a 42-19 win over East Carolina University in the Greenville school's first year in the consolidated UNC System en route to an 11-1 record, ACC championship and Sun Bowl win over Texas Tech.

"They had been talking about this being their bowl, about how they were going to beat us," Carolina's All-America guard Ron Rusnak said. "So it wasn't hard to get up for this one. I mean, it would've looked kinda bad if we had lost."

Ensuing games over the years between Carolina and East Carolina were marked by any number of milepost moments and heroic performances, beginning perhaps with Pirate Eddie Hicks scoring three touchdowns as Coach Pat Dye's "skinny legged kids" hammered the Tar Heels 38-17 in 1975 in Kenan Stadium. There was Kelvin Bryant's six-touchdown rushing output in Carolina's 56-0 win in 1981, just days after the spying caper in which an East Carolina assistant coach was nabbed watching Tar Heel practices and making notes from the UNC Law School library.

For two decades in the 1980s and '90s, the Tar Heels eschewed scheduling the Pirates, citing a policy in football and basketball that they didn't play teams from in-state that were not ACC members. The North Carolina State Legislature ran a good power game in the mid-1990s, suggesting that Carolina (and N.C. State, for that matter) should put the Pirates back on their schedule and avoid any ugly haranguing over funding for their respective campuses.

That led to a 2001 encounter in Kenan Stadium highlighted by Tar Heel Derrick Johnson racing from behind to strip the ball from Pirate Art Brown near the goal-line, turning a sure touchdown into Carolina's ball and helping secure a 24-21 Tar Heel win.

Things change, do they not, over nearly half a century?

The Pirates have had enough success in football they no longer need games against Carolina and State to build their program and prestige, and Carolina in the last decade has come full circle in its scheduling philosophy, deeming that games against in-state institutions Elon (2012), N.C. A&T (2015), Western Carolina (2017-18), Appalachian State (2022-23) and Charlotte (2024-25) are preferable to one-offs against Idaho and San Diego State, the games mixed amid a desire to schedule home-and-home series with Power Five conferences and the occasional marquee opponent at a neutral site.

So with no further games against East Carolina on the schedule or even under discussion, the Pirates tied a bow around and put a cherry on top of this rivalry with an emphatic second-half domination of the Tar Heels to collect a 41-19 win Saturday on a sultry, sticky day Down East.

That follows a 55-31 Pirate win in Chapel Hill in 2013.

Which was capped by a 70-41 annihilation in 2014 in Greenville.

Pirate Coach Scottie Montgomery, who played against Carolina as a Duke receiver and later as an assistant coach under David Cutcliffe, spoke for all of Pirate nation in the aftermath: "I love beating the Tar Heels. I love it. It's the best win we've had to this point because it's the last win that we've had. But I love beating the Tar Heels."

As games often do, this one turned on a dime, the critical juncture coming midway through the second quarter.

The Pirates held a 14-13 lead, but the Tar Heels had been productive on offense after their season-opening travails on the West Coast, with Antonio Williams breaking some first-hits early in the game and having popped a 48-yard run and QB Nathan Elliott running the short-to-medium passing game to good effect with completions to Thomas Jackson for 12 yards and Anthony Ratliff-Williams for 28 to forge into Pirate territory at the 30 yard line.

The game was delayed so that ECU's medical staff could attend to defensive back Colby Gore, who was injured on a downfield block by Williams on Ratliff-Williams' big gainer. When the video board replay showed a potential helmet-to-helmet strike from Williams, the officials reviewed the play, flagged Williams for a personal foul and ejected him. As the doctors and trainers continued to attend to Gore, tempers flared in the northwest corner of Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and a noxious row ensued between some Pirate and Tar Heel fans, at least one spectator taking a nasty fall down several rows of bleachers.

With the Tar Heels losing their most productive runner and sophomore Michael Carter still out with a preseason injury ... with the Pirate players and crowd galvanized by the penalty and injury to Gore ... you sensed from the field that the Tar Heels were walking a thin precipice.

Indeed, the drive stalled and Freeman Jones and his powerful leg connected one of his four field goals—his second-quarter strikes of 49 and 42 yards had enough distance to convert from 60 yards. The Tar Heels took a 16-14 lead, but it wouldn't last. ECU marched quickly down the field and scored on one of a number of remarkable catches Pirate receivers made against what looked to be quality coverage by a Tar Heel defensive back. Trevon Bell snared the ball with his right arm in the corner of the end zone, and ECU went up for good at 21-16.

"We just kind of lost our focus at that point for whatever reason,″ Tar Heel Coach Larry Fedora said to one question after the game, adding to another query about the Pirate pass-catching acumen: "Give their receivers credit, they made some very competitive catches. Early on, I thought we were playing too soft on some of those guys and giving them a few things. We tightened up in the second half but again they made some competitive catches."

The Tar Heels scored on five of six first-half possessions, but four of them were field goals, illuminating an issue of not being able to finish drives. That escalated in the second half, with the Tar Heels not even being able to start them, with the Pirates gaining considerable swagger as the game evolved and limiting Carolina to only 78 yards offense and zero points. Two poor snaps from reserve center Jonathan Trull, who was subbing for starter J.J. McCargo, led to losses of 19 yards, and twice the Tar Heels couldn't convert on fourth-and-1.

"In the first half, we were executing and shot ourselves in the foot with so many self-inflicted wounds and penalties in all three phases," Fedora said. "We could have gone in at half with a couple of touchdowns lead if not for all the penalties. Then in the second half, we come out and we don't execute. That's on me, that's all there is to it."

The worst of seven first-half flags was a personal foul by senior defensive lineman Tyler Powell, who hit Pirate Reid Herring as the quarterback was running out of bounds after launching an incomplete pass on third-and-long. That gave ECU a first down, and it scored four plays later.

"That was not a very smart play," Fedora said. "You're going to get off the field. There's no excuse for making that mistake on the sideline."

It was a melancholy scene around Fedora and the Tar Heel locker room in the game's aftermath. The strains from the Pirate band could be heard just a few yards away—"There's a party goin' on right here, a celebration to last throughout the years"—while the Tar Heels tried to make sense of their next step.

"You just go back and look in the mirror," Ratliff-Williams said. "You understand what you have to put in to be a successful piece on this team. That's what everyone has to do. We'll be all right."

"I think we as a team need to pick up," linebacker Cole Holcomb added. "That's how I feel. I think we need to respond to this and pick it up as a team. Make a choice to do that. It starts with me and the leaders on this team. That's just where we've got to start."

Next up for the Kenan Stadium opener next Saturday: a Central Florida team that was 0-12 when the home-and-home series was scheduled in 2015 and then was 13-0 last year. The Tar Heels were 11-1 in the regular season and ACC Coastal champions when the papers were signed.

Carolina graduate Lee Pace (1979) has written "Extra Points" since 1990 and reported from the sidelines for the Tar Heel radio network since 2004. Reach him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.

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Players Mentioned

Michael Carter

Nathan Elliott

Cole Holcomb

Thomas Jackson

Freeman Jones

Tyler Powell

Anthony Ratliff-Williams

Jonathan Trull

Antonio Williams

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