A gallant effort came down to another red-zone rebuff and a couple of coaching decisions, as the Tar Heels missed a chance to win their 10th game by a boink and a bounce at the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.
Despite the 28-27 defeat to 15th-ranked Oregon, Mack Brown and his revamped coaching staff will have far more to build on over this spring and summer than last season’s bowl loss to South Carolina that finished UNC with a 6-7 record.
“Last year I walked out of Charlotte not very proud of the way I coached and not very proud of the team I put out there,” Brown said. “This year I couldn’t be prouder of these guys who left nothing on the field. They gave us everything they had. As a coach, you want to know who you are going into an alley with, and I wouldn’t trade them for anybody else.”
The Heels started the season 9-1 and closed with four consecutive losses, the last of which will stay with the many returning players in the right way preparing for 2023. They deserved to win this game and had 10-point and 6-point leads deep into the fourth quarter while the Ducks defense, without four regulars, held them to a pair of field goals in the second half.
But playing with a green secondary allowed an Oregon team they had limited to barely 200 total yards to score two late touchdowns, the last with only 19 seconds left in the game. The Ducks got rolling behind quarterback Bo Nix, who had been outplayed by Drake Maye for the first three quarters and drove them 79 yards to the tying touchdown on a fourth down pass at the goal line.
The heartbreak was even worse when Oregon’s PAT bounced off the left upright and still went through when a miss would have sent the game into overtime.
Carolina’s failure to score touchdowns in the red zone, which might have helped offensive coordinator Phil Longo decide to leave, resurfaced when Maye’s third-down run fell just short of the goal line and what could have been a 14-point lead midway through the final period.
“Fourth and goal at the 2, should we have gone for it, probably should have, as good as their offense was,” Brown said of the potential touchdown that would have given UNC a 28-14 lead and seven minutes later a 31-21 advantage. Instead, he kicked the first of two field goals that left the Ducks a slim chance to win with two hurry-up scoring drives.
Only 15 seconds remained with no timeouts when Maye faced the impossible task of moving the offense the necessary 50 yards to reach the range of Noah Burnette, who had booted a 44-yarder earlier. Maye’s 60-yard Hail Mary pass into the end zone fell to the turf and reality of squandering a huge upset set in.
Until those last two drives that included two pass-interference penalties, the patchwork defense was outstanding behind Cedric Gray, with eight tackles, and Power Echols, whose athletic, acrobatic interception of 40 yards led to a 14-point turnaround at the end of the first half when Maye fired a laser down the seam to Kobe Paysour, who took it 49 yards to the house and a 21-14 halftime lead.
“Here was Drake with an analyst coaching him and Lonnie Galloway, who had never called plays before, throwing to guys he hadn’t thrown to in the middle of the Holiday Bowl,” Brown said of two big catches by freshman Andre Greene.
Maye was the rave of FOX TV announcers and a national audience with three perfect touchdown strikes in the first half to Green, tight end Bryson Nesbit and slot receiver Paysour. Greene was subbing for his namesake, senior Antoine Green, sitting out with an injury, and freshman Paysour replaced All-American junior Josh Downs, who opted out to prepare for the NFL draft.
“Most fun I ever had in a football game in the first half, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life,” said Maye, who will return to UNC for a third season after which he’ll be eligible to turn pro.
Amidst all the speculation about offers to enter the transfer portal, Maye reaffirmed his love of school and support for its “hall of fame head coach.” Maye, Gray and Echols will lead more than a dozen returning starters and have Carolina back in the hunt next fall.
“What I see is we closed the season with nine wins, which has only happened one other time since I left here and I left here a long time ago,” Brown said. “So, this is one heckuva season for North Carolina.
“It could have been 10 or 11 wins, but most of our team is coming back and that’s what I am looking forward to. Second time in school history we won the [ACC] Coastal. And I don’t care about anything else except that one Coastal trophy, and these guys will remember that for the rest of their lives.
“If it had been one point our way tonight, I couldn’t be any prouder. They played really hard.”
That they did and would have loved to bring the bowl hardware back across the country.
Unfortunately, this is the first time Carolina has ended the season with four straight losses since Brown’s inaugural years at UNC in 1988 and ’89 when the Tar Heels finished 1-10 each time. Three and a half decades later, thankfully, there are those nine wins and a division championship to brag about.
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Derrick Tuskan
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Tough last game, truly a real heart breaker. This season in our 9 wins, we had 5 wins by 3 points or less and 1 win by a single touchdown. In those last 4 games we had losses by 4, 3, and 1 in the bowl game, plus the Clemson game where by the box score we equaled or exceeded in almost every category except one. 3 turnovers to Clemson’s 0.
We had some good luck to go with quite possibly the best QB to ever play in college. In the end the luck balanced out a bit.
I remain encouraged by the football program and sports across the board.