The Independent Weekly’s commentary on local sports
At 4-2 overall and still needing to finish .500 in its last six games to attend some random tire bowl, the North Carolina football team trots home to have coach Butch Davis sign the dotted line.
Is it refrigerator worthy or will there be no more Twinkies in their lunch boxes? The report card for year three of the Davis experiment follows after the jump.
No. 21 UNC (0-0) vs. The Citadel (0-0)
[6 p.m., Sept. 5, Kenan Memorial Stadium]
ESPN360.com
Key stats: In two openers as UNC’s starting quarterback, T.J. Yates compiled 439 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions. Although not outstanding performances (Russell Wilson would beg to differ after the N.C. State-USC game), Yates moved the ball enough to keep defenses honest in the running game. With Dwight Jones now out for the contest, Carolina’s success this season depends on the receiving corps. No pressure or anything, guys.
Saturday is just the fourth meeting between the two light blue Southern schools; Carolina defeated The Citadel in all three previous contests, including the last meeting Sept. 6, 1986.
The key stat for the Bulldogs is two — the number of ankle injuries limiting their chances of an upset. Potential All-American receiver Andre Roberts, with 2,951 career receiving yards and 29 touchdowns, and quarterback Bart Blanchard both are recovering from ankle injuries suffered during preseason practice.
Best message board tidbit on the game: The Citadel look-a-likes from CarolinaBlue.com.
My personal favorite: Receiver Scott Harward and Spock.
Every Tuesday while I idle between classes and procrastinate leafing through my AP Style book or other things journalism students believe justify a degree, I’ll scout the Internet (or Internets if you’re one of those weird people) for UNC related articles.
I consider this more time worthy than what my neighbor in the student union is doing: passed out with a sandwich slowly drifting from her hand dangerously close to her chair.
So here we go:
That’s it for now; I’m back to studying while the woman next to be tries to clean up her sandwich. I hope her nap was worth it.
E-mail any links you find or leave them in the comments section.
UNC released its depth chart Monday for the opening game against The Citadel with absolutely zero surprises minus a bit of shuffling behind the entrenched starters.
Two things to note:
The depth chart can be viewed at www.Tarheelblue.com.
UNC coach Butch Davis, meanwhile, met with the media for his weekly Monday press conference. Unfortunately, yours truly is stuck in Carroll Hall all day, meaning we must turn to www.InsideCarolina.com for the scoop.
Davis spoke about freshman athlete A.J. Blue, who played both running back and quarterback in high school, and how he has jumped up the depth chart at running back to be on equal standing with Jamal Womble (pictured).
“I don’t know that he’s [Blue] necessarily moved ahead of Jamal, but I think he’s earned the opportunity,” Davis said according to Scout.com. ”I can’t tell you how impressed that I’ve been with his work ethic.”
Keep an eye out for Blue and Womble Saturday, especially if the game turns ugly (for The Citadel) early. Womble has long been thought as more of a permanent solution at running back.
Davis also said that senior tight end Ryan Taylor will miss another week or 10 days before they re-examine getting back into action.
The Tar Heels lost another player — junior defensive back Matt Merletti — to a torn ACL Tuesday, team spokesman Kevin Best said in a statement.
The Cleveland, Ohio, native joins Carl Gaskins, a sophomore offensive tackle who was injured Aug. 12, as players who will miss the entire 2009-10 campaign due to a torn ligament.
Da’Norris Searcy and Merletti (pictured) were competing to replace Trimane Goddard at safety this season, though Searcy headed into preseason practice slated in the starter position.
A co-captain on Carolina’s special teams in 2008, Merletti recorded 11 tackles and scored a touchdown on a fumble recovery against UConn.
Merletti can use a medical redshirt to salvage an extra year of eligibility, allowing him two more seasons to suit up for the Tar Heels. Junior Jonathan Smith is listed behind him on the preseason depth chart.
Overall team depth must be a concern for Butch Davis, especially with the unexpected loss of several key players before the season has started. The offensive line is especially thin, and Goddard’s outstanding season cannot possibly be replaced by one man.
Another key injury in the secondary or the offensive line could hinder any progress expected in year three of the Davis experiment.
UNC started preseason practice Friday, officially beginning the 2009-10 season — the third season under head coach Butch Davis.
Carolina ended last season with an 8-4 record and finished third overall in the Coastal Division with a .500 record in league play. The Tar Heels enter the season ranked No. 20 in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll, despite many holes in the offense, a tough schedule and an improved ACC.
Here are a few questions leading up to the first game Sept. 5 against the Citadel.
Will the receivers step up? Frankly, the Tar Heels are probably tired of hearing it, but the loss of one of the nations’ top receiving corps from last season — which included Brooks Foster, Hakeem Nicks and Brandon Tate — leaves the talent level severely depleted. Greg Little is the only player returning with more than 10 receptions. Little and a slew of freshman and underclassman will have to take the pressure off the rushing game if UNC hopes to move the ball on offense.
At least not in the most important statistic: wins.
Don’t get me wrong. UNC football coach Butch Davis has the gears in motion for churning out competitive ACC teams for years to come, but with the current pieces in place, the Tar Heels’ season will be eerily familiar to last season.
As a “sports blogger,” I’m not really sure what ethical parameters are supposed to guide me. I guess if a UNC athletic department official offered me $20 to say that Boston College’s cheerleaders smell like bourbon, or that I heard that Randy Shannon huffs amyl nitrite and drinks PBR, I wouldn’t do it. I might take the money, but I’d never write anything I knew to be false.
I am, however, fairly certain that I don’t have to pretend to the same kind of impartiality that news reporters fake. I’m free to be a fan.
Hakeem Nicks
At first, this didn’t matter much. I like football, I live in North Carolina, I knew I’d enjoy covering the ‘Heels, but I didn’t care much whether they won or lost. To be honest, I expected them to be terrible, but I thought that, in some ways, it might be more interesting to cover a bad team than a good one.
But now I’m a convert. These guys don’t have the most high-profile players, a media-anointed coach, or the most historic program. They play for a school whose academic standards are high enough to make recruiting tricky. They’re not in, or near, a major urban center likely to attract high profile players. They lost starting QB TJ Yates early in the season, and their best offensive player, future NFL starter Brandon Tate, two weeks ago. Neither will return. Coming into Saturday’s game, they had two in-conference losses, one to Virginia Tech when Yates went down, and the other to erratic Virginia in their first game without Tate.
But this has been a strange and exciting season for North Carolina under Coach Butch Davis, an old hand brought in to raise the program’s reputation. Strange because they keep winning games despite allowing opponents to beat them in total yards and time of possession, and exciting because they make big plays, offensively (usually big passes to Hakeem Nicks or Tate), defensively (the team is intercepting the ball at a record-setting pace), and on special teams (specifically punt blocks).
Last week, against see-saw Virginia, they finally outgained an opponent - and lost.
Saturday, North Carolina faced another ACC foe, 5-1 Boston College. BC has an ace QB, Chris Crane, and is known for scoring in bunches. Having lost two in-conference games, UNC had to win to keep their bowl hopes alive.
However, UNC lost their first Tate-less contest last week, and I was pretty skeptical that they could keep pulling rabbits out of a hat every game. Continue reading »
When I moved to North Carolina a year ago, I was surprised to find such avid football fans in Chapel Hill. I knew the team had some success in the past, but I’d never thought of it as a storied program, and I guess I always assumed that basketball consumed the interest of most UNC fans. But I’ll be damned if Tar Heel fans don’t turn out for every home game like their team was in the championship hunt – and if the program’s recent trajectory has been any indication, maybe they will be, soon enough. They’ve certainly been a compelling team this year.
In any case, Chapel Hill turns into a picture-perfect college football town on home-game Saturdays, brimming with tailgaters in Carolina blue sipping pregame cocktails underneath the shade trees. (It’s a scene out of some idyllic, nonexistent past, especially when the temperature hints at fall’s approach, and the clear skies conspire with a mild breeze, as they did Saturday night.)
And when those genteel folks hit the stadium, they raise a respectable ruckus.
Maybe it was all the pregame gin rickeys (or whatever it is that people in golf-visors and sweater vests drink), or just the good year the ‘Heels have had thus far, but the fans were completely geeked by kickoff, making more noise than they have all season.
Kenan Stadium looks strange at night when the stands are filled with fans clad in Carolina blue, like half a giant luminescent blue Easter egg emerging from the turf. Into this dreamlike arena emerged the home team, hoping for another encouraging win, and the visiting University of Connecticut Huskies, ranked 24 in the country, undefeated, and hoping to stay in the hunt for the Big East title, a trophy they shared with West Virginia last year.
The night would retain that pristine, end-of-summer feeling for the next four hours, the only clouds in the sky generated by the fireworks that exploded over the stadium every time the ‘Heels scored on the way to their first win over a ranked opponent since 2005.
Junior QB Cameron Sexton started in place of injured first-stringer TJ Yates, Coach Butch Davis opting for the backup who beat Miami with solid play last weekend over freshman Mike Paulus. Sexton was more than respectable, once again, passing for 56 yards and one interception in the first half, though the stats didn’t tell the story of this game.
The game’s other big question mark, UConn backup QB Zach Frazer, would not fare as well.
The ’Heels showed defensive moxie in the half, twice holding the Huskies to field goals despite the best efforts of star tailback Donald Brown, the nation’s leading rusher at 181-yards-per-game, to get into the end zone. They also had two first-half interceptions, bringing their season total to 11, matching their total for the entire last season. One of those interceptions was by safety Trimane Goddard, the player who saved the Miami game by snatching a game winning touchdown reception out of the hands of a Miami receiver as the clock expired. His grab in Saturday’s game was a bit of a save as well, taking the ball out of Husky hands at the end of a long drive when they were inside the UNC 20 yard line.
Special teams were an unexpected boon, chalking up two punt blocks and a punt deflection, all in the first half.
Still, the 17-3 halftime score, while good, didn’t reflect exactly how lopsided this game would become. In fact, none of the numbers told an accurate story. A glance at the end-of-game stat sheet would lead the casual observer to assume that UConn won. In fact, UConn played a pretty good game, but UNC made points out of their every mistake.
Despite a temperature drop and a 20-minute delay when half the stadium lights inexplicably went out, the crowd stayed amped and the team responded with total badassery in the second half. Highlights included tailback Shaun Draughn breaking free for a 39-yard TD off a great block by right tackle Garrett Reynolds, and Frazer, falling to the ground under pressure, inexplicably tossing the ball right into the giant mitts of behemoth defensive tackle Marvin Austin, who chugged into the end zone for another TD to make it 31-6.
Despite more total offensive yardage and a lopsided time-of-possession advantage, UConn couldn’t convert those numbers into points. Final score: 38-12.
As the last tuft of smoke from the night’s final fireworks drifted over the field, fans lingered in the stands. Little kids in too-big jerseys climbed around on the stadium seats, their parents sitting and watching contentedly even after the players disappeared into the locker room. The student section was still three-quarters full long after game’s end, co-eds passing flasks and singing, arms thrown carelessly around each other’s shoulders. They all knew that winter is coming and there won’t be many more nights like this.
Until the second half of last week’s game against Virginia Tech, it looked like the Tar Heels had a good season going. Not a national championship season, but the kind of season that can reasonably be called progress, and might even include a shot at having some fun in the ACC title race. Then quarterback TJ Yates went down with a broken ankle, consigned to the sidelines for six weeks.
Even though Yates isn’t on anyone’s Heisman list, the injury was a boot to the groin of UNC’s offense.
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