Late Touchdown Sinks UNC Football in Home Finale vs. Duke

Duke scored a touchdown with 2:18 left to overcome a late deficit and beat Carolina 32-25 at Kenan Stadium Saturday night.

“Really proud of the effort everybody gave all week and tonight,” head coach Bill Belichick said after the game. “Obviously, we came up a few plays short and that’s disappointing. But give Duke credit. They made a few more plays than we did at critical times.”

The game-winning score came after Duke had executed a fake field goal from the UNC 27-yard line, with kicker Todd Pelino taking a lateral 26 yards to the 1-yard line. Running back Anderson Castle punched it in from there for his third touchdown of the night.

Carolina had held a slim 25-24 lead for much of the fourth quarter. After Duke had taken a 24-10 lead with a touchdown on its opening possession of the second half, UNC scored 15 unanswered points on a Gio Lopez touchdown pass to Jordan Shipp (with a two-point conversion to Shipp afterward) and a touchdown run from Davion Gause. The pass to Shipp was one of two total touchdowns for Lopez on the night, as he also ran for a score on Carolina’s opening drive. Lopez finished with more total yards (224) than Duke’s Darian Mensah (202), who entered Saturday as one of the nation’s most productive quarterbacks.

“I feel like Gio’s been trending up since the beginning of the season,” said Shipp, who finished with 83 yards. “It’s no surprise. He makes these throws in practice. I’m just happy to be able to see him go out there and do it in a game.”

Unfortunately, for Carolina, whatever offensive progress it made paled in comparison to its mental mistakes. UNC committed 12 penalties for 103 yards on the night, including a crucial roughing the kicker call which nullified a Duke missed field goal and led to a touchdown on the next play. The Tar Heels had averaged fewer than six penalties per game through the season’s first 10 contests.

“You’re shooting yourself in the foot,” said linebacker Andrew Simpson. “It’s hard to play good defense when you’re just penalizing yourself after a good play… it’s not us.”

Comparatively, Duke was only flagged three times for 27 yards. Added Simpson, “It was getting chippy. It was going both ways, it just seemed like we were getting all the calls on us.”

Overall, the Blue Devils dominated time of possession. Duke held the ball for 36 minutes compared to 24 for UNC, and the Blue Devil offense ran 24 more plays than the Tar Heels did. Duke ran the ball 43 times, which nearly equaled Carolina’s 52 total plays.

The loss is UNC’s first against Duke at Kenan Stadium since 2017 and snaps a three-game home winning streak against the Blue Devils. Now 4-7 overall, the Tar Heels will wrap up the regular season when they visit NC State in Raleigh next Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward

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Late Touchdown Sinks UNC Football in Home Finale vs. Duke

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