CHAPEL HILL - Adarius Bowman was walking down a hallway between the Tar Heels' dressing room and the equipment room in Kenan Football Center after practice one afternoon last week when he passed head coach John Bunting.

"Adarius!" Bunting chirped at the 6-foot-4 wide receiver. "Did you have fun Saturday? I know we lost--but did you have fun anyway?"

"Yes sir, coach," Bowman said, nodding and smiling and thinking back to his 76-yard scoring play at N.C. State just a few days before.

"It was fun being in that crowd ... mixing it up ... making plays, wasn't it?"

"Coach, that's what I'm here for," Bowman said.

Seconds later, Fred Sparkman left the dressing room and, as he was opening the door to the weight room, Bunting stopped him.

"Hey Fred, was that you getting knocked around out there today?" Bunting asked of the athletic linebacker.

Sparkman scrunched his face and shook his head.

"Coach, I wasn't on the ground all day," he said, correcting his coach.

"Okay, guess I got you mixed up with someone," Bunting said with a smile and then acknowledged the truth: "He was running over people out there."

Carolina's 2003 football season has now unofficially evolved into a debutante ball for Bowman, Sparkman and 10 other true freshmen and a non-victory lap for a handful of seniors caught in the vise of a program in transition. The Tar Heels were positively horrible Saturday afternoon in losing to old rival Virginia, 38-13, and fell to 0-5 for the fourth time in history (1988, 1967 and 1952 being the others). The only positives from the Tar Heel perspective were its continued sturdy kicking-game play and the pluck of its freshmen--including new starting linebacker Larry Edwards and the continued evolution of Bowman, Sparkman and their classmates.

"The young players played their fannies off," Bunting said. "I'm excited about that. We're going in the right direction."

Earlier in the week, Bunting had talked of the elevation of Edwards to first team and Sparkman to second and the contributions of receivers Bowman, Jesse Holley and Mike Mason and noted: "This is an outstanding class. Now all we have to do is bring in another. And another. And another ..."

Carolina's defense Saturday was abysmal, yielding yet another 500-yard-plus game and giving Virginia QB Matt Schaub no challenge in completing 19-of-22 passes for 284 yards. It's hard to do that against air. The Tar Heels are woefully inept at cornerback, given injuries to Michael Waddell and Cedric Holt and the inability of the others to efficiently cover and tackle.

The offense played worse by comparison given that it possesses a lot more ability and maturity than the defense. The Tar Heels were penalty and mistake-prone and had no one who could block Darryl Blackstock, the Cavaliers' gifted outside linebacker. Blackstock made mincemeat of Tar Heel blockers and underlined the good judgment coach Al Groh had in assigning him the number 56--in honor of the number worn by NFL great Lawrence Taylor, who happens to be a player Groh recruited to Carolina in the mid-1970s while on coach Bill Dooley's staff.

Things got so bad late in the first quarter Saturday that Bunting called a time out, pulled the entire team around him and chewed it out collectively for a growing list of mental errors and a lack of physical productivity.

"I did not like our body language," he said, "I did not like the fact we were being called for silly penalties--procedure, lining up in the neutral zone, hitting a guy out of bounds. So it was a wake-up call."

Unfortunately, the Tar Heels continued to slumber on an otherwise perfect October Saturday for football and in front of a respectable crowd of 51,000 in Kenan Stadium. It's very sad that the program has slid this far and is dealing so much misery to a group of decent, hard-working players.

"We've got some warriors who are suffering," Bunting said of players like Jeb Terry, Dexter Reid, Darian Durant and other upperclassmen. "They are really into playing well and winning, and it's killing them." "Mentally, physically, emotionally--I'm tired of freakin' losing," said Terry.

At the top of the Tar Heel personnel pyramid are these survivors--a handful of quality players who've proven talented, disciplined and tough enough to survive the purge of the Carl Torbush -to-John Bunting regime-change.

At the bottom are 22 true freshmen (and four others at Hargrave Military Academy, who hope to soon join the program). Twelve of them have been indoctrinated this fall. Never before has Carolina played a dozen freshmen in one season. They've been worked into various personnel groups throughout five games. They've had a major impact on special teams, tailback and at receiver and now are getting more playing time on defense.

Those frustrated enough with the proceedings to leave after three quarters Saturday missed seeing a defense that for much of the quarter had seven newcomers on the field--Edwards, Sparkman and Melik Brown at linebacker, Puff Thomas and Shelton Bynum at tackle, Mahlon Carey at safety and Green at cornerback.

Edwards in particular put some juice into the crowd earlier in the game, sharing a sack with Brown, making another tackle-for-loss and recovering a fumble forced by Green on a Virginia receiver. He and Sparkman were visible--they were noticeable by being in your field of vision quite often. They each had nine tackles to lead the Tar Heels, that a turn from the norm as usually the Carolina safeties make the most stops. Bynum shot through his blockers on one play for a nice tackle and three-yard loss. Mason has become a thorn for opposing punt-return teams from his gunner position and is a threat to return any kick for a big play.

With nothing left to lose, Bunting will continue to try to win in the short-term but build for the long-term with the youngsters.

"Larry and Fred played hard, they played fast," Bunting said. "Larry Edwards was all over the place. That's the kind of talent we need to be competitive in the ACC. Those are the kind of players we're playing against."

Bunting and the Tar Heels have clearly been caught for a season and half now in that chicken-and-egg dilemma of which comes first--confidence or success?

Winning teams are comprised of confident players. But you cannot become confident unless you have success.

The 2001 Tar Heels rode a wave of confidence and positive emotional adrenalin instilled in that 41-9 massacre of Florida State to a five-game win streak.

The 1996 and 1997 Tar Heels flattened everyone on defense in their way because they knew they could.

Dean Smith's Tar Heels over 30 years won the close basketball games at the end because they'd been there dozens of times before.

"We've had limited success at this point," Bunting said. "We'll keep accentuating the positives with this team. Eventually as the young players and the slightly older players continue to mesh and gain some confidence, we'll get better. Confidence comes through one of two ways. One, you win all the time. Or two, you do some good things in preparation for games that leads to some success."

All this hand-wringing over a football game seems rather silly, though, when you pull the lens back and look at the big picture, one dimmed over the weekend by the untimely and tragic death of 27-year-old Stephen Gates, the sideline reporter for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Gates was killed in a hit-and-run accident early Saturday morning while changing a flat tire on Interstate-40 near Chapel Hill.

For some unknown reason, the Tar Heel Sports Network has included my observations during its pre-game, half-time and post-game shows since 1998, and I had gotten to know Stephen as a casual acquaintance and associate. In the minutes leading up to kick-off each Saturday, the broadcast crew of Woody Durham, Mick Mixon, Stephen and I would give our "keys to the game," with my spiel coming after Mick, Woody and before Stephen, who would have gone from the broadcast booth upstairs down to the sideline by that time.

It was my job to throw the commentary to Stephen after giving my key, and Saturday as the clock ticked down I realized I was at a dead end--there was no Stephen Gates down on the sideline. He'd been plucked from our midst off-schedule, so to speak, just as the brother of Tar Heel center Jason Brown had been two weeks ago in Iraq. So I resolved to be grateful that I had yet one more day to watch football in Kenan Stadium. God has a knack for keeping us humble--on the important issues and the trivial ones as well.