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Serious: No time to savor win, Heels say
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Published: November 3, 2009
CHAPEL HILL - North Carolina started work Sunday on preparation for the final month of the football season, a time that it wants to lead to four victories, a winning record and bowl eligibility.
The work began two days after Coach Butch Davis gave the players a firm message after returning home early Friday from a 20-17 win at Virginia Tech. His instructions were to enjoy the victory, but not for very long, and to start getting ready for Duke on Saturday at home.
"I talked to the team and said, ‘You've got about 10 hours to enjoy that victory, and then you've got to put that behind you and we've got to move on,' " Davis said. "This is a very critical and important stretch the rest of the season."
Duke is no longer the ACC doormat on which UNC has wiped its feet 18 times since the 1989 season. Duke is 5-3 overall and 3-1 in the ACC behind quarterback Thaddeus Lewis, who is picking apart defenses with precision passing, and the coaching of David Cutcliffe, who has turned around the program's fortunes in two seasons.
UNC and Duke will play each other with winning records for the first time since the 1994 season, when Duke had its last winning season. UNC needs two wins to qualify for bowl eligibility and its remaining games will be split evenly at home and on the road.
Quarterback T.J. Yates needed no prodding from Davis to understand that UNC can still accomplish a great deal after notching its first ACC win of the season last week.
"It's kind of hard not to take more time with this win and savor it a little bit," Yates said. "Coach kind of reiterated to us the win we just had doesn't really mean anything unless we win this next game.
"It doesn't really matter unless you can back it up with another win. It kind of got a lot of the guys focused. That one win's not going to make our season. It's the rest of the games that we've got to finish out with that will kind of determine how our season goes."
Duke and UNC closed their seasons in the final game in 46 of the previous 56 seasons. This season's game will be the earliest that the programs have played each other since 1938, when the game was played on Oct. 29.
Yates welcomed a return to a normal schedule this week after consecutive Thursday night games forced altered practice routines. He is confident that the offensive line is back to full strength after being ravaged by injuries for the season's first two months and that it will spark the running game and offer him better protection.
All the normal line starters began the game at Virginia Tech for the first time since the season opener. Lowell Dyer, back at center for the first time since Sept. 5, was often replaced by backup Cam Holland, however, in fighting off what Davis termed "rust" from his time out.
Among the problems that Davis must solve in the season's final month is his team's consistency. Is the real UNC the team the one that fought back after falling down 17-14 in the fourth quarter at Virginia Tech, or is it the team that was beaten at home by Florida State and Virginia, both struggling at the time of the games?
Yates hopes that last week's progress has determined UNC's identity.
"Obviously I think that the real team is the one that we showed out there on Thursday night," Yates said. "We had the entire defense (play hard) and the complete offense was running the ball and throwing the ball, kind of just managing the game well and doing everything that we needed to do."
Davis had another message for his team before beginning the week's work. He has found in a long coaching career that teams sometime have trouble handling success more than they do adversity.
Yates understood clearly. He is sure that every UNC player will understand the threat that Duke poses, but said that predicting which UNC team will take the field can be difficult.
"We've got to be more consistent, especially coming off a big win," Yates said. "We've got to come back and be consistent in back-to-back weeks.
"We've got to play against Duke the same way we did against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on a Thursday night. You can't put it off as another home game vs. Duke. It's got to mean that much more to us."
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