Comments on: UNC 20 #13 Virginia Tech 17

By: Jordan8027

Jordan8027 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:07:40 +0000

great post and great points by the readers, what a great overall tone in this thread versus post GT and post UVA and post FSU. i don’t have any further analysis to redundantly add, but numbers stats and highlights aside, i just want to say how relieved and proud i am of the team. while frustrated as hell at our lack of production on O and inability to get key stops at times on D in our poor ACC start, the losses really just made me feel bad. The kids are working hard and no one was giving up on plays. Effort was there, but at times execution was not. Tonight both showed up, and they got a much deserved win. Way to go heels!

P.S. is it me or are VT fans that live in the triangle just obnoxious? don’t get me wrong i’m friends with them, close friends w/ a few even….but they let it be known their loyalty to VT moreso than nearly any other school. anyways, just wanted to throw that out there.

By: Andy In Omaha

Andy In Omaha — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:59:14 +0000

Now that I’ve officially finished a day at work getting in the face of my Nebraska fan friends that told me “we couldn’t beat Tech, so UNC will lose by 50,” I want to actually say the coaches called pretty good game.
First, UNC will gadget you to death on offense, and they pretty much have to. The offensive set that puts Draughn out wide and bringing Little to the running back is extremely effective. You could tell that even when Little wasn’t running the ball, Tech looked confused as heck on defense. I’m hoping that Shoop can come up with some more plays to run out of this set to maximize it’s potential. Like the Dolphins do with the wildcat in the NFL, the gadgets go bad if you do the same things with it.
Seond, Greg Little proved something to me. He made some pretty impressive catches and ran the ball pretty well. I was under the assumption that opposing defenses weren’t wasting too much time on him because of the success Erik Highsmith had at the beginning of the year. Now that Little is back to being a threat who can beat you in more than one way, I’m hoping that defenses will key more on him and open up plays for Highsmith, Joshua Adams, Jehranie Boyd, and Zach Pianalto.
Third, this defense is extremely successful at pressuing the QB. Even my dad was shocked that Withers was dailing up blitzes in the 4th quarter, but Carter and Sturdivant proved they were more than able to keep Tyrod Taylor contained, and Redick is more than capable at being a dependable LB in the middle. I’d still like to see them mix up more formations and personnel on defense, but I thought Withers did a good job calling his game last night. Same with Shoop.
Finally, the OL did a good job in the second half protecting Yates, which was key to the offensive success. UNC also ran for 181 yards on Tech, which normally has a pretty stingy defense. I think if the OL can play as well as they played in the second half, Duke and NC State should be no issue, and Miami looks very beatable at this point.

By: Jonathan Starsmore

Jonathan Starsmore — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:25:28 +0000

“My educated guess is that we will be facing Russell Wilson in his farewell game at Carter Finley.”

Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I don’t see any chance that Wilson leaves for the NFL after his redshirt sophomore season. There simply isn’t any demand in the NFL for 5’9″ quarterbacks, so he’ll probably stay to play QB for NC State until his eligibility expires. Of course, he could blow up on the baseball diamond and leave early for the MLB, but dude was a .236 hitter with 0 homers last year — he’s going to have to improve miraculously to get big league teams to draft him after this upcoming season.

By: PRGuy

PRGuy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:29:27 +0000

Lost in the shuffle is the fact that Va. Tech had 12 days to prepare for the Heels. Normally, that would put UNC at a disadvantage but I think the Hokies may have taken them a little too lightly. All in all, another reason why last night’s victory was so impressive — on the road against a top 15 coming off a bye week.

Heels Perspective, for some reason NCSU usually has a hard time agains Maryland. I know the Terps are awful this year, but it’s a strange year for the ACC.

By: rathskellar68

rathskellar68 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:54:33 +0000

I too agree with Santiago. For years I would have thought that having two extra days “to prepare for Dook” was as important as having two extra days to prepare to eat a cupcake. But, things being as they are this year, preparing for Dook actually IS important. That may be mortifying, but better mortification now than on game day.

P.S. Going for it on 4th and 7 was the best decision Butch has made this year. As one of the papers said, he is a machine that learns.

By: CLTHeel

CLTHeel — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:12:04 +0000

“Barth II” Exactly. I
thought about it with about two min left. Could we see another Halloween treat? I was at the Miami game where Connor hit a field goal to win and now Casey hits one to win. And what about Schallock’s hit on the guy after a punt in the first half!!
Ditto the comments about how enjoyable it was to see both sides of the ball play well.

By: Heels Perspective

Heels Perspective — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:47:51 +0000

The win certainly should help energize Kenan next week. State never really pressured Lewis, and he lit them up. I wonder how the Heels D will try to play them…..

Speaking of State and the last game. My educated guess is that we will be facing Russell Wilson in his farewell game at Carter Finley. If FSU beats them badly tomorrow, I could see State beating Maryland, but not Clemson, Va Tech. That would make them 4-7 goiing into the UNC game.

By: Tar Heel Fan

Tar Heel Fan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:34:53 +0000

“By the way, didn’t the Duke game used to always be the last game of the season? Why would they change that tradition?”

Because it was perceived that the UNC-NCSU game had superseded UNC-Duke in terms of being the bigger rivalry in football. Duke has been so bad for so long and UNC-NCSU has been highly entertaining so they opted to put that on the traditional “rivalry weekend” along with all of the other schools. The irony is there is a potential for that two 5-3 teams will face off next week in Chapel Hill versus UNC possibly playing an NCSU team with a losing record at the end of the season.

Funny how that works.

By: william

william — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:28:27 +0000

I agree with Santiago. I am not sure there is any discernible pattern to ACC football results this year whatsoever. A lot of these teams look great one week and simply awful the next. UNC probably should have beaten VPI last year so this helps make up for that devastating loss somewhat.

The UVa game seemed so horrible but inexplicably UVa doesn’t seem to be the same team that lost to the Tribe. Thus, UNC’s three losses are all pretty much quality losses, to GIT, UVa and FSU, to go together with two quality wins now, over UConn on the road and over VPI on the road. If they can beat Duke and State, I think it is a pretty successful year overall given the losses to graduation, the NFL and injuries.

By the way, didn’t the Duke game used to always be the last game of the season? Why would they change that tradition?

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:09:49 +0000

Great write up THF.

HP, you beat me to the punch on your points. The OL did look a lot better last night now that they are closer to being full strength again. Yates actually had time in the pocket late in the game and that certainly helped his accuracy a ton.

Ryan Houston is a load! Except for the couple of times when he tried to spin move and lost his forward momentum he played absolute smash mouth football.

As someone else said, you could see Yates get his confidence back in the late stages of the game. Part of that probably had as much to do with VT’s own version of bend don’t break that took some of the heat off Yates. The 3rd-7 and 4th-7 passes were dead on the money and done with authority. I thought they tried too hard to get the ball to Pianalto when he was covered up but it didn’t hurt us and he did have a couple of nice catches.

All in all, I was happy when the Heels came back and tied it at 17 all. That was all it took to show me how good we can be, even if we had lost the game. It was a great performance from our defense and the offense, other than the INT, looked very poised on a national stage against a ranked opponent. This is what I want to see from my team every week and last night’s game lived up to my expectations of this team. If they play like this the rest of the season then I will be happy and I expect we just might win another game or two.

PS. The coaches had a pretty good game too.