DURHAM – In spite of recent appearances, the Tar Heels aren’t stressed over losing two consecutive games in what some observers might deem in alarming manner.
First, North Carolina was stunned at home last week, 70-50, by James Madison, and then Saturday against Duke at Wallace Wade Stadium, it went from leading, 20-0, to losing, 21-20, in darn near a flash.
The Tar Heels moved their lead to 20-0 with 8:37 left in the third quarter, but 267 yards and 21 Blue Devil points later, spanning about 18 minutes of action, UNC was in catch-up mode, something it didn’t achieve.
Yet, even with two highly unsettling losses in eight days, the Heels appeared to take the loss in stride already turning their attention to Pittsburgh’s visit next Saturday.
“For me, I just take it as a loss and I’ve just got to come back next weekend and go in for my team,” senior defensive tackle Jahvaree Ritzie said. “We took it to heart, of course, but we can bounce back from this. We’ve got a lot more games to play, a lot more opportunities to go out there and get some more dominant wins.”
The Heels actually were dominant in the first half, taking a 17-0 lead into the locker while allowing Duke just 97 yards of offense and six first downs. But the Blue Devils ate chunk after chunk in the second half, accumulating 12 plays that went 10 or more yards.
The matador defense that afflicted the Tar Heels against JMU the week before, showed up after halftime Saturday. And the offense scored just three points over its final eight possessions managing only 156 total yards in that span, amounting to 19.5 yards per possession. Given the average starting field possession in that span was its own 24-yard-line, the Heels just didn’t get anything going.
The game flipped on its head, but there’s no need to dwell on it, quarterback Jacolby Criswell said.
“That’s football,” he said. “You see a lot of games like that and it just happened to happen to us today. We just have to find a way to dig deep to find a way and move forward.”
He acknowledged the seriousness of the loss, especially in the manner it happened, but Criswell kept a positive manner.
“Big rivalry game, you want to come out with the win for the seniors. Devastating loss. Games like that, those are why you play football. They did what they needed to do in the second half to get the win. We just have to keep improving week in and week out.”
The job of head coach Mack Brown and his staff is to put this loss to bed Sunday and move the team’s nose forward. One would think that challenge is greater this week than after the JMU game simply because this is two bad losses in a row, and Saturday’s was to a rival on national TV.
"Uh, no. But this is a bad one, because we've won five straight,” Brown said about a difference in his challenge, while also noting UNC’s win streak over Duke that ended.
“And they know how important this is to our fan base. But any loss, you just play 12 times, it's not like basketball, baseball and you got a bunch of games. So, if you lose one, you can't go back and get another one. This one, they all hurt."
The last two hurt tremendously, and no matter how positive the team is about cutting the cord, it’s a significant task, one facing the entire program.
