Sept. 9, 2007

By Adam Lucas

GREENVILLE--An hour after Ben Hartman's 39-yard field goal sailed through the uprights on the last play of the game, the Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium scoreboard still burned brightly:

ECU 34, UNC 31. Stadium officials had turned off the video portion of the board, along with every other part of the apparatus except the score. Odds are, it's probably still illuminated as you read this.

In a way, it was helpful. It made you pause, look up, and take an extra glance. Last week, we all remembered how much fun Carolina football could be. This week, we remembered how much it could hurt. Welcome to infancy--not in the life of a football team, but in the life of the program being built by Butch Davis.

We've been through this before, of course. On too many occasions, to be honest. Maybe you sat out in the rain and watched Carolina lose to Navy in 1989. Maybe you saw Damon Hartman kick a 56-yard field goal for a 12-9 NC State win in 1990.

If you had forgotten how this is done, you're excused. There was no very recent history to remind you. Carolina's previous road trip was a 45-44 squeaker over Duke. Prior to that, the Tar Heels had lost seven straight road games by at least 18 points. Those seven defeats came by an average of 29.6 points.

Yes, you read that correctly. Other than the win over hapless Duke, Carolina's previous seven road games had ended, on average, with a defeat of more than four touchdowns.

That explains why it felt so hopeless when the Pirates reeled off 24 points in 12 minutes during the middle two quarters of the game. We'd seen this plenty of times in recent years. Carolina comes out, competes for a quarter, then gets a bad break and implodes. That's what looked imminent Saturday night. One blown coverage cut the Tar Heel lead to 17-14. An interception led to an ECU field goal at the end of the first half.

And then, at a pivotal point in the game, the Carolina special teams were needlessly offsides on an onside kick--that particular version of the play is designed for kicker Connor Barth to recover the ball--and turned what would have been a Tar Heel possession into an ECU short field. Three minutes later, another Pirate touchdown made it 31-23. It was maddening. It was inexplicable. It was life at the beginning of a program. The snowball was teetering dangerously on the edge of the cliff.

That's when something unexpected happened.

"I found out a little bit about our character," Butch Davis said. "When you're pressed and the tide starts to turn, do you fight back? Are you accountable? And every single kid on our football team, regardless of whether we were up by 10 or down by 10, they were going to compete."

That's what eventually made it sting a little more. Carolina came back and was in position to win the game. One fourth quarter drive was snuffed by a Hakeem Nicks fumble. Granted a reprieve by a Hartman missed field goal, T.J. Yates began orchestrating what looked like the game-winning drive. Johnny White was running, Yates was throwing, and the Tar Heels were inside the ECU 35 with a minute to play. There will be some talk about the third down play--a run up the middle--that led to Connor Barth's 52-yard field goal try.

But it was the second-and-3 play, when a fumbled snap led to a loss of one and set up third-and-4, that completely changed the drive. Until that point, Carolina's last six running plays had averaged 8 yards per carry. They were winning the line of scrimmage. But the fumbled snap changed the momentum of the drive.

"It was loud out there," said Yates, who threw for 344 yards and left no doubt that John Shoop has found his quarterback. "It was really hard to hear. It was tough to hear the person in front of you."

And so the drive ended with a 52-yard field goal attempt instead of, perhaps, a 45-yard field goal attempt. It's a measure of how good Connor Barth has been during his career that we all assume if the ball had been firmly placed, he would have nailed a 52-yarder. That's not a chip shot. But as he lined up, it seemed like it. After all, earlier in the fourth quarter he had turned to no one in particular and said, "I feel a game-winning kick coming on. Maybe a 52-yarder."

That's actually what he said. We never got to find out if he could drill it.

What gives you hope, though, is that there's a plan. We don't ask for much as Carolina football fans, do we?

Barth's potential game-winner was set up by a coaching decision.

"We orchestrated things to have the wind in the fourth quarter," Davis said. "There was about a six-yard difference in Connor's kicking in pregame. He was hitting from 50 yards in one direction and 57 yards the other direction."

So the coaches adjusted their plan accordingly, and it very nearly paid dividends. The fact that Davis's wisdom comes as a pleasant surprise, that there might be a plan in place for a particular important game situation, is a testament to our suffering.

Consider that the Tar Heels scored just 69 points in the first quarter in all of 2006. Through two games in 2007, they already have 31 first quarter points. Someone is preparing this team. Someone is executing.

Yes, there are signs of life. There are also signs of youth. The bad news is that youth doesn't become older more quickly.

"Every time this football team plays this year there's a good possibility all the games have a chance to be pretty much like this," Davis said. "I don't think by any stretch of the imagination our football team expects to dominate people like they did last week. They will all be knock-down, drag-outs."

Spoken like a man who is in it for more than just Saturday night. So take another look at the scoreboard, even if it stings.

A couple years from now, you'll want to remember that you were there at the beginning.

Adam Lucas most recently collaborated on a behind-the-scenes look at Carolina Basketball with Wes Miller. The Road To Blue Heaven will be released on September 1. Lucas's other books on Carolina basketball include The Best Game Ever, which chronicles the 1957 national championship season, Going Home Again, which focuses on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.