North Carolina 41, The Citadel 7.
Links of interest:
– Game story, The Post and Courier
– School release from The Citadel
– School release from North Carolina
– Game story, The News and Observer
– The Citadel’s post-game notes
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Well, if The Citadel needed to fulfill its season-long quota of mistakes, this was probably the right game to do it…
Four turnovers? Sure. Costly false start penalties? Yep. Poor kick coverage? Uh-huh. A missed field goal? Why not.
The game was never in doubt, thanks to a series of errors by the Bulldogs. It was a tough day at the office.
However, those missteps hid a few positives.
The defense actually played fairly well at times. UNC scored 41 points, but two of its touchdowns were on returns.
North Carolina’s three offensive touchdowns came on a sustained drive, a long TD pass, and another drive that was helped along by a dubious pass interference call. Considering how explosive the Tar Heels’ offense can be, that’s not too bad from the Bulldogs’ perspective (it’s not great either, to be sure).
The offense controlled the ball to an enormous degree (42:25 time of possession), which is why The Citadel ran so many more offensive plays than UNC (80 to 47). However, the Bulldogs did not take advantage of the discrepancy. A lot of that can be credited to UNC’s defense, but the Bulldogs also lacked some of their usual crispness in execution.
I was more disappointed in the kick return TD than anything else. There is no excuse for that, especially coming out of the halftime break.
The Bulldogs played hard. They didn’t play very well. Every now and then, that’s going to happen.
It just can’t happen again this season.
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A few other thoughts:
– It was a tough night to be in the stands, with the cool air and the wind proving a wicked combination. Nevertheless, a couple of Bulldog fans thought it was t-shirt weather.
My blood is a little thinner than theirs.
– The Summerall Guards were excellent, as usual. That performance was one of the highlights of the entire day.
– The Citadel had plenty of fans in attendance. It was a very good showing by the travelling support.
– The replay review in the second quarter took about ten minutes, which to me was at least eight minutes too long. I’m also not sure they got the call right in the end.
I don’t think anyone enjoyed that delay, with the possible exception of the folks working the concession stands.
– Mitch Trubisky is a better athlete than I realized (and I thought he was a pretty good one as it was). He showed an ability to move in the pocket that should be beneficial in the NFL.
At one point late in the third quarter, though, with a big lead, he kept on a designed run. I wondered what Larry Fedora would have said afterwards if his star QB had suffered an injury in that situation.
– Speaking of injuries, Cam Jackson did not play for the second consecutive week. I hope he is ready to go by December 3.
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I’ll write about the FCS playoffs later in the week. For now, I’ll just say that my cynicism regarding the FCS selection committee was well-founded.
Below are a few pictures. Are they good? Of course not.
I included a few shots I took while wandering around the UNC campus. The game action photos are not annotated (there also aren’t nearly as many of them as usual).
Filed under: Football | Tagged: North Carolina, The Citadel |
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