Hines Helps NC State Run Past UNC in Tar Heel Football Season Finale

Looking to end the season on a high note with an upset victory on the road against a bitter rival, the UNC football team simply could not find a way to stop Nyheim Hines—who ran for a career-high 196 yards and two touchdowns on Saturday during NC State’s 33-21 victory over the Tar Heels.

UNC will finish the season at 3-9 with a 1-7 record in ACC play, but traveled to Raleigh riding a two-game winning streak and playing as well as it has all season.

NC State, on the other hand, will head into its bowl game with an 8-4 record–but had lost three of its last four outings.

The Tar Heels appeared to be building on that momentum advantage when two early touchdown passes from quarterback Nathan Elliott—and strong defensive play–helped them take a 14-12 lead into the locker room at halftime.

Everything flipped midway through the third quarter, however, when Hines loudly announced his presence.

The speedster broke free for a 54-yard touchdown run down the right sideline to give NC State a lead it wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the game. Then on the very next Wolfpack drive, Hines took a handoff on the first play and broke free for a 48-yard touchdown—strongly diminishing UNC’s chances of pulling the upset.

“We gave up a couple of catastrophics, and I don’t know if we had a chance to get the guy on the ground or not,” head coach Larry Fedora said after the game. “I’d have to go back and see it. Somebody had to have misfit a gap for him to come through there that quickly and be that wide open.”

The outstanding performance from Hines was part of a dominant rushing attack that combined to gash the Tar Heel defense for 292 yards on the ground.

UNC managed just 83 rushing yards of its own on 24 carries, as the Wolfpack front seven forced the Tar Heels into becoming one-dimensional on offense.

Elliott posted some solid numbers throwing the ball—finishing with 277 yards and three touchdowns—but inaccuracy proved to be his down fall.

The Texas native completed only 21 of his 45 passes, while also tossing two interceptions in the second half—one of which led directly to Hines’ second long touchdown run.

“I thought he played just like he has the last couple of games,” Fedora said, of his quarterback. “Really gutsy. I thought the offensive line did a nice job of keeping him up in a lot of situations.

“He just threw a couple of balls that you probably would like to have had back,” the coach added. “Overall, I thought he led the team well, and I thought he played with everything he had.”

It certainly wasn’t the way UNC had hoped to end its season. An upset over the Wolfpack could have helped mitigate the pain of one of the worst years the Tar Heels have endured in recent memory.

But there is a silver lining.

This team had a wide variety of young contributors who gained valuable experience down the stretch, which will be that much more important in the future.

Injuries may have kept plenty of Tar Heels off the field this season—contributing to the amount of losses—but they were never used as an excuse. Up until Elliott’s second interception–which gave NC State the chance to kneel out the rest of the clock, and will go down as UNC’s final offensive play this year—the Tar Heels refused to quit.

That, more than anything else, is how this team is likely to be remembered.

“Our guys, I’ll tell you this,” Fedora told reporters. “The 11 guys that we put out on the field, they fought and gave everything that they had. We had some guys out there who weren’t playing the positions that they should be playing, but they did what they had to do to try to help this team win, and gave everything they had.”

Game Notes

• It’s the first time UNC has finished a season 3-9 since 2006, which ultimately turned out to be the final season under head coach John Bunting.
• Orange High School standout linebacker Payton Wilson–who recently decomitted from UNC–was at the game, on the NC State sidelines.

 

 

FINAL STATS

 

 

Cover photo via Gerry Broome (Associated Press)