Dec. 27, 2009
by Lee Pace
Butch Davis was extolling the virtues of receiver Greg Little's metamorphosis early Saturday evening, noting the raw athletic ability he brought to Chapel Hill three years ago, the brief detour to the tailback position, the transformation into a reliable catcher of T.J. Yates' passes and an authoritative runner on end-arounds. Early in the Meinke Car Care Bowl against the University of Pittsburgh, Little bolted 31 yards on a delicious bite of trickery and made two colossal catches, one in front of the Tar Heel bench for 16 yards, one in the end zone for a touchdown and both nearly elevated with the upper floors of the many banking towers in uptown Charlotte. Visions of Hakeem Nicks' monster game in this very bowl one year ago began dancing in the heads of Tar Heel fans.
"What a great leap on that touchdown," Davis said. "He's made several of those this year. And he had great presence to get his foot down in bounds."
Then inexplicably, Little celebrated by kicking the ball into the end zone seats, following his season-long proclivity for allowing his emotions to govern his actions. The Tar Heels were flagged for 15 yards for a personal foul, and Little was greeted with a stern admonition from Davis before he even reached the Tar Heel bench area.
"The other part of it," Davis said, "we've still got some work to do."
There you have the Tar Heels in a microcosm as they have put together back-to-back 8-4 regular seasons, back-to-back Charlotte bowl trips and back-to-back losses to Big East teams by miniscule margins after leading late in the game. Davis and the Tar Heels still have some work to do. They lost to West Virginia by one point in 2008 on Pat White's throwing wizardry and now to Pitt by two points as tailback Dion Lewis darted for 159 yards and kicker Dan Hutchins connected on a 33-yard field goal with just under a minute to play.
"There were some things we did very well tonight," Davis said. "The one thing clearly we didn't do was play as smart as we needed to ... That's my fault, as the head coach I have to take responsibility for composure, staying in the moment, playing the game and playing as hard as you possibly can."
Defensive tackle Cam Thomas flinched on a head fake from the Panther center on an apparent 48-yard field goal attempt with under two minutes to play, giving Pitt a first down and a closer shot from the 33 that Hutchins converted. Kicker Casey Barth muffed an attempted squib kick out-of-bounds, giving the Panthers a field position gift late in the first half that helped them tack on a field goal before intermission. After riding Ryan Houston's robust legs and back on a 14-play march inside the Pitt five midway through the second quarter, Yates tried to find Houston through the air in the end zone but threw into a covey of Panthers, resulting in an interception and the loss of a near-certain three points and a potential seven. For the second game in a row, a freshman receiver fumbled the ball away after a completed pass. And an offensive line ravaged by injuries all season played two freshmen the entire game against Pitt--guards Jonathan Cooper and Travis Bond--as well as a new center in Alan Pelc, and the result on occasion was an assignment bust that put Yates in the cross-hairs of Pitt's dominating defensive line. (Contrast that to a Pitt O-line with three seniors, one junior and not one missed start among five first-teamers all year because of injury.)
"We kind of did some dumb things that came back to bite us," cornerback Kendric Burney said.
"We just have to play better, play smarter," defensive tackle Marvin Austin added. "We're just scratching the surface in terms of a team that can win 11 or 12 games."
For perspective it's not a bad idea to look across the line of scrimmage at the Panthers' program, now in its fifth year under coach Dave Wannstedt. Much was made during the month-long build-up to the game about the Wannstedt-Davis history, about their days as fellow assistants on the staffs of head coach Jimmy Johnson at Oklahoma State, Miami and Dallas. Both Wannstedt and Davis are tall in stature and have commanding physical presences. Both are excellent at setting the organization tone and delegating to quality assistants, but both have a burning fancy for the details, for the fine points that make up the whole. Both relate well to 18-year-olds and both seem quite secure in their late-50s to have come full circle back to the college ranks. Both retain some of their NFL history, though, in fielding pro-style offenses and Cover-2 defenses built around deep and talented forward walls.
Wannstedt is simply a bit further along in his efforts at his alma mater than Davis in his job at Carolina. Pitt finishes the season with 10 wins for the first time since 1982, coincidentally the last year of a lively four-game intersectional rivalry between Pitt and Carolina from 1974-82.
Bill Dooley and Johnny Majors were old coaching pals from their early-1960s days at Mississippi State and instigated a series that ensued with Majors' Panthers and a tailback named Tony Dorsett coming south to Chapel Hill in October, 1974--one year after offensive tackle Wannstedt had graduated and was trying the NFL. The Tar Heels clobbered Pitt 45-29 that day, pounding out 522 total yards offense with Mike Voight notching 113 and James Betterson 87 more. Dorsett, a sophomore who had been first-team All-America the previous year, was held to 59 yards on 19 carries.
"This is the first time in three or four years that we've been manhandled upfront," Majors said. "North Carolina just literally lined up and beat the hell out of us."
Four years later, Majors had moved to Tennessee and Dooley to Virginia Tech when the Tar Heels traveled to Pittsburgh. Panther QB Rick Trocano hit a 13-yard scoring pass with under two minutes to go to lift Jackie Sherrill's team to a 20-16 win over Dick Crum's inaugural Carolina squad. The following September, Pitt came to Chapel Hill and the Panthers wilted under the hot September sun and dropped a 17-7 decision. Afterward, the Panthers were taking I.V. fluids in the dressing room and Sherrill was fuming that the Heels were illegally pounding his center on punts.
The 1982 season opened with Pitt, under first-year coach Foge Fazio, hosting the fifth-ranked Tar Heels on a Thursday night game in Three Rivers Stadium. With Lindsey Nelson in the booth delivering the play-by-play to a national audience and Dan Marino and Kelvin Bryant leading their respective offenses, the defenses stole the show with a 7-6 Pitt victory.
"Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, Hugh Green--that was Pitt football when I was growing up," says Tar Heel offensive coordinator John Shoop, a native of the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont. "We'd take the A-77 down from Oakmont to old Pitt Stadium. After kick-off, the ushers would slip away from the gate for a smoke and we'd slip right in behind him. It was great fun. Pittsburgh was a great football town--high school games on Friday, Pitt Panthers on Saturday and the Steelers on Sundays."
Wannstedt, who grew up just outside Pittsburgh and worked the steel mills at night while playing football at Pitt by day, was hailed upon his return in 2005 as being a "Pitt Man" in the mold of fellow Panther Mike Ditka. He has worked tirelessly to reacquaint the program with its Western Pennsylvania recruiting roots. The Panthers are an excellent team and, as Davis noted, about "35 seconds away from playing in the Orange Bowl as the Big East champion."
"I don't think our kids really understand what 10-3 says about a program, even though nine wins is outstanding," Wannstedt said. "Ten wins separates you, and I don't think these guys know what they have accomplished here tonight and probably won't for a few weeks or a month or however long. I think that people know that we are back as a program and you have to go out and prove it. You have to show up and you have to play and you have to win games like this."
Carolina, meanwhile, has endured a bridge year at 4-8 when Davis first came to Carolina in 2007 and then two 8-4 campaigns that showed great promise--the wins over Notre Dame in 2008 and at Virginia Tech this October being two of the finest in school history--but have seen the Heels stumble three years running against N.C. State, blow a commanding lead over Florida State and fail to close out bowl victories that were there for the snatching. The 2008 season will be noted as well for the heart and resolve the team showed when its offense was bludgeoned with personnel issues in late September and early October.
"I'm very proud of this football team," Davis said. "I am very proud of this program. The mileage we have made in these three seasons to put ourselves in back-to-back winning seasons, back-to-back bowl games, we've covered an awful lot of ground. We have just scratched the surface of where we want to go. There are going to be bigger and better things in the future."
Ten wins, perhaps, ten wins as in a Pitt program seeking to resurrect its own Majors-Dorsett glory days? The Tar Heels had three 10-win seasons in the Nineties and two in the Eighties, and in fact were coming off a 10-2 campaign when they took the field in Three Rivers Stadium on that night 27 years ago. And they have not been that far the last two years. Eight wins can easily become 10 with a few less errors of assignment and execution, when freshmen become juniors, when Davis and staff have stocked the talent cupboard with enough players that a rash of injuries doesn't devastate one position or one side of the football.
Which brings us full circle back to Greg Little. Over the course of watching 13 games this year from the sidelines, it's clear Little has become one of the emotional sparkplugs of the team. He's lathering up his defensive teammates during a timeout huddle one minute, flinging his helmet into the bench after a bad offensive series the next. An airborne football aimed in the same zip code is deemed his and no one else's. And he's not shy about sticking his face in a cornerback's chest on a running play. If you can channel that fire and passion into 100 percent constructive energy--and bury the barking and touchdown histrionics--the result could be quite impressive.
Little says he's coming back for his senior year. Marvin Austin is weighing his options. Deunta Williams and Bruce Carter say they are definitely coming back. None of the highly regarded juniors had a stretch run that overwhelmingly gives them the green light, but each has his own story. We shall see over the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, Butch Davis and the Tar Heels continue to work their math problem--turning eight into 10.
Lee Pace concludes his 20th year of writing "Extra Points," a colorful and insightful look at the world of Tar Heel football. Check back for his next missive in early February after the national signing day in recruiting.
