It was a tale of two halves for the UNC football team on Saturday night at Carter-Finley Stadium, as the Tar Heels trailed at halftime before exploding in the second half on the way to a dominant 41-10 victory over the NC State Wolfpack—a win that clinched the program its first bowl game appearance since 2016.
Rainy conditions contributed to an ugly first half where the Wolfpack capitalized on an interception thrown by UNC freshman quarterback Sam Howell late in the second quarter. NC State scored a touchdown not long after the turnover to take a 10-6 lead into halftime.
From there, however, the Tar Heels woke up and played like a team desperate to once again play a game in December.
Sophomore tailback Javonte Williams ran for two touchdowns and caught another in the third quarter, while Howell also connected on a 52-yard touchdown pass to Dyami Brown not long after to give UNC four unanswered touchdowns in less than 15 minutes of game time.
UNC freshman quarterback Sam Howell threw for a career-high 401 yards in UNC’s 41-10 victory at NC State on Saturday. (Photo via Dakota Moyer)
By the end of the night, Howell had amassed a career-high 401 yards through the air and added another touchdown pass to Dazz Newsome midway through the fourth quarter.
Head coach Mack Brown’s team gained another 180 yards on the ground and ultimately finished with a season-high total of 620 yards in a game that provided perhaps UNC’s best and worst halves of football all season long.
“We dropped passes, probably trying too hard,” Brown said afterwards. “We slipped. We weren’t planting well, early, and they said, ‘Well it’s slick out there,’ and I said, ‘Well, State’s not slipping, so there’s something wrong with us,’
“At halftime we settled back down,” the coach added. “We knew the importance of the game. The difference in the second half was totally our defense forced turnovers and we turned them into points about every time.”
The second-half surge proved to be too much for the struggling Wolfpack to handle, giving the Tar Heels their first win over NC State since 2015.
UNC will finish the regular season at 6-6 in what was initially thought to be a rebuilding year, while NC State ends the year at 4-8 after losing its final six games.
Despite this being a real down year for the team from Raleigh, this win still carries plenty of weight. With Brown placing a renewed emphasis on the Tar Heels beating their in-state rivals this season—not to mention earning bowl eligibility—there’s also an argument to be made that this could be the team’s most important win to date in 2019.
“I’m excited about our bowl game,” Brown said. “Wherever we’re going, it doesn’t matter. There can’t be a bad bowl for us. If anybody says that, we want to get as many fans there as we can. Now we need to win the bowl game and win seven games. That would be a really good accomplishment for this team.”
Up Next:
The Tar Heels will now have to wait to learn their eventual bowl destination, although it was reported that representatives of both the Military Bowl and the Independence Bowl were in attendance on Saturday.
Game Notes:
- Sam Howell has now thrown for multiple touchdowns in all 12 of UNC’s games this season. His 35 touchdown passes rank fourth all-time in ACC history for a single season.
- NC State’s interception came from redshirt freshman linebacker Payton Wilson, a former four-star recruit from Orange High School in Hillsborough who flipped his college commitment from UNC to NC State back in 2017.
- The Wolfpack had beaten UNC in four of the last five meetings between the teams entering Saturday’s game. This was UNC’s largest margin of victory against NC State since winning 52-20 in 1996.
- Howell’s 401 yards were the second most by a Tar Heel quarterback all-time against NC State, behind only T.J. Yates’ 410-yard performance in 2010. It was also just the 12th 400-yard passing game in program history.
Cover photo via Associated Press
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