April 8, 2008

• Spring Football Notebook

By Adam Lucas

For some players, spring practice--and even the spring game--can be tedious. It's hour after hour of hard work, with the gameday payoff still five months away.

Not for Jordan Hemby. For the Tar Heel cornerback, the spring game was exhilarating.

The Morganton native played a significant role in Monday's scrimmage, making a pair of tackles and breaking up a pass. Hemby will be a junior for the 2008 season, but he'd never seen action in a UNC spring game before yesterday. His career has been defined by two things: vast promise and significant injuries. Now, in his first healthy spring, he's finally starting to see some results.

Hemby was one of the most sought-after recruits in the state of North Carolina in 2005, and the Tar Heels had to fend off a challenge from Florida in the weeks leading up to signing day. After redshirting that fall, Hemby went through the early part of 2006 spring practice but felt a cramp-like sensation in his lower leg during a 6 a.m. workout. It was diagnosed as compartment syndrome, a blood flow problem which can be very serious.

"It hurt for me to walk," he says. "It was a scary thing, because I had never been to the hospital. They told me that if they didn't fix it, I would be done with football forever and I'd walk with a limp for the rest of my life."

Hemby came back in the fall and was on the verge of working his way into the secondary rotation in 2006. But on a disastrous afternoon for Carolina football, a 52-7 loss at Clemson, he suffered a season-ending torn ACL.

"It happened so fast that I didn't know what happened," he said. "I was going to tackle somebody and planted my foot. As I was spinning, my foot never came out of the ground."

Hemby labored to return from the injury and spent most of his 2007 practices wearing a bulky knee brace. He did not register a tackle and was not listed on the two-deep depth chart by the end of the season.

But after going through a healthy spring for the first time in his career, Hemby has been a revelation in the defensive backfield. He hasn't displaced Kendric Burney or Charles Brown from their starting cornerback spots, but he has given the Tar Heels some flexibility.

"Going through the spring injury-free was big for his confidence," Butch Davis says. "And he gives us two things. First, now that he's healthy, we can see how much athletic ability is there. He has a burst. He also makes us more physical, because he can light into people."

He's not completely bulletproof--one of the highlights of Monday's scrimmage was tailback Ryan Houston flattening Hemby in space--but he followed that play a few snaps later by making a surehanded open-field stop of Hakeem Nicks.

Both Brown and Burney are small, quick corners who are best suited to move inside when the Tar Heels use their nickel package. That means new defensive coordinator Everett Withers needs to find someone to fill the normal Brown/Burney spots on the outside. His strong spring means Hemby--who even after the torn ACL remains one of Carolina's fastest players--is firmly in contention for that role.

To make sure he's ready for that opportunity, he's committed himself to studying as hard off the field as he plays on it. He regularly takes notes during film sessions and then reviews his notes before each practice to ensure that he focuses on correcting past mistakes on the practice field.

"That kid never quits," Burney says. "He is unbelievable. His work ethic is better than anyone else we have in the secondary. He never complains about anything, and he puts pressure on me every day because he works so hard and he's so talented."

Now, finally healthy, he's getting the chance to show those talents.

"I don't know if anyone has ever looked forward to a spring game like I looked forward to this one," Hemby says. "Now I'll be able to go through a whole summer healthy for the first time. I'm going to take it one day at a time, and I'm excited."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.