Jan. 1, 2005

by Lee Pace, Extra Points

CHARLOTTE - The psychology of sports is a fascinating subject. Books have been written and cottage industries have developed to address the curious machinations of the six inches between the ears of ballplayers. Confidence, intensity, visualization, routine, motivation -- each are components of a complicated stew of stimuli dispatched from the gray matter to the muscles.

"These things are of tremendous interest to me," Tar Heel Coach John Bunting said the day before the 2004 Continental Tire Bowl. "You just never know what might happen."

Bunting was taking questions from the news media at a press conference and was asked if he thought the Tar Heels' opponent the next afternoon, Boston College, might "have an ax to grind." After a mid-season victory at Notre Dame and a November triumph at West Virginia, the Eagles' sights had been on the Fiesta Bowl and the Bowl Championship Series. The warmth of the desert in winter .... a google of bucks from an upper-tier bowl .... a prime-time television slot. But that dream was flushed the last week of the season in an upset loss to Syracuse.

"There's no doubt about that at all," Bunting said. "I would think they would be very anxious to close their season out with a win."

The truth is that I was viewing the scenario from 180 degrees across the spectrum. My hunch was that the Eagles would mail this one in for that very reason. I think Charlotte is a neat city, and I've never lived outside the comfy confines of North Carolina (just never occurred to me otherwise). But for a team used to living in an environment of Red Sox and Patriots to come south to NASCAR country in the dead of winter -- when it wanted to go to Phoenix in the first place -- just seemed as if it might be a debilitating blow to the psyche. The Eagle players even voted against receiving a bowl ring. They'll take a CD player or other widget over a piece of jewelry with the word "Tire" on it.

And the Tar Heels?

Why, they were riding the crest of a resurrected season and a two-year bowl hiatus. A 7-5 season with a bowl victory would be a distinct difference from a 6-6 ledger. The Tar Heels were finally playing with a little confidence after two-plus seasons of having sand kicked in their faces. The mental concoction as I tasted it pre-game was decidedly in favor of the Tar Heels. Add a significant home-crowd advantage for Carolina (easily 65,000 of the 70,000-plus fans in Bank of America Stadium). Consider the Tar Heels' battering-ram list of opponents (Miami, FSU, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Utah, Louisville) against a Boston College season that included Temple, Massachusetts, Rutgers and Ball State.

I handicapped it with the Tar Heels winning by two touchdowns and Darian Durant, Jason Brown and Madison Hedgecock strolling off into the sunset.

You just never know what might happen.

Indeed. It turned out that the mental axis tipped toward the Eagles Thursday and even leaned further their way early in the fourth quarter when their gutty and effective quarterback, Paul Peterson, left the game with a broken left leg. During an extended break in the game while the medics were attending to Peterson, Boston College Coach Tom O'Brien gathered his team around him, the Eagles holding a 27-24 lead.

"I told them Paul had broken his leg and was done," O'Brien said. "I told them we were not going to lose the football game. We were going to win this football game. It didn't matter what it took or how long it took. We would play until tomorrow morning if we had to."

O'Brien then made the most important decision of the game -- he called for a fake field goal with place-kicker Ryan Ohliger setting up to attempt a 38-yarder. Nearly every fake field goal I've seen over the years has featured the holder taking the snap, feigning with the kicker an effort to kick the ball, then coming out of the crouch for a run or pass. But on this version, the holder received the snap and then handed the ball to the kicker, who ran inside Carolina's outside rusher toward the Eagles' left side for a 21-yard touchdown. That was a major momentum shift and lift for the Eagles.

Forty-five minutes later, they were basking in the glow of a 37-24 victory.

The Continental Tire Bowl meant something to them, after all. BC has now won five straight bowls.

"I like their attitude," Bunting said. "They win bowl games, they graduate their players, they're physical and they have what it takes."

And the Tar Heels, at this point in their evolution under Bunting, do not quite have what it takes.

They've played some outstanding football this fall. Durant noted before the game that if he'd not taken a crucial third-down sack late in a 27-24 loss to Virginia Tech, the Tar Heels might have won that game and could have shared ACC title honors with the Hokies. That's pretty big stuff for a team picked by the media to finish 10th of 11 teams in the ACC.

"We could be somewhere warm right now with ACC co-champion rings on our fingers," Durant said.

But they're not quite good enough defensively. The forward wall made hardly a dent in the biggest, strongest line it faced all season, and Peterson had a field day on bootlegs to his right side, making the Tar Heels, Bunting noted, "look silly" in their pursuit. The secondary was outplayed by the Eagle receivers. The kick-off cover team made a nice recovery after an early season Waterloo at Virginia, but Thursday it was flaccid against an outstanding Eagle return specialist in Will Blackmon, who repeatedly set up the Eagle offense with good field position. The receivers are still prone to dropping the occasional pass, and as good as Carolina's pass protection was for most of 2004, it wilted too often under assault from BC and its All-America defensive end, Mathias Kiwanuka.

"We've done an about-face," said Brown, who admitted to shedding some tears in the locker room after removing his Carolina blue jersey for the last time. "The past two years were not pretty at all. We have changed the culture and we've spread the leadership down to the lower ranks with the younger guys. They're starting to understand exactly what it means to be a part of UNC football. They're learning.

"We're not 100 percent, we have not arrived. If we were, we would have a victory today. The hay is not in the barn. We're still working. It's a continual thing."

The intelligence quotient was off a smidgen in the bowl game as well. Once the Tar Heels wasted a timeout when a reserve defensive back didn't realize that, with safety Kareen Taylor injured with a sprained ankle, he was due on the field in a nickel-package situation. Another made a crucial mental bust that helped BC to a touchdown just before intermission. And receivers Derrele Mitchell and Wallace Wright were judged by an official to be celebrating too fervently after a score, helping BC get better field position after the ensuing kickoff.

"Come on, you're not supposed to get flagged for celebrating," Brown said. "You have to be smart. You have to keep your poise."

The loss took some of the luster off what had been an eventful and mostly joyful 10 weeks since Carolina returned from Utah. After that 46-16 debacle, Bunting turned to his seniors and demanded they find a way to resurrect their teammates' battered psyches and man-up the final month of the season. Durant and Brown led a team meeting the Monday of the off-week and implored their teammates to start the season anew.

"There was too much talent in the room for us to not be successful," Brown said.

"We had Miami coming in, and no one wants to get embarrassed on national TV," Durant added. "It was time to step up, to do the little things right that had been getting us killed."

"The seniors gave us everything they had -- all their leadership, all their passion, all their fire," sophomore receiver Jesse Holley said.

The dominos began falling: