Anybody that chose to stay up for the UNC/Cal game was treated to a close game by the time the fourth quarter arrived, but the quality of the game wasn’t a whole lot different than what we have been seeing
from the Tar Heels. The main difference in this one is that Cal had their own issues that prevented them from blowing the door wide open, and ultimately one back-breaking play in the final five minutes cost the Tar Heels the win. Before we get into that, let’s start at the beginning.
UNC’s opening drive of the game was a sideways pass that was fumbled almost immediately. From there, it took Cal just four plays to find their way into the end zone for a touchdown. The Heels struggled to answer back for quite a while, but the nice thing was that the Golden Bears weren’t capable of making things worse. Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele was hitting his targets most of the night, but his receivers dropped the ball an alarming amount. UNC was able to tie the game thanks to an 18-yard run from Benjamin Hall, but near the end of the quarter Sagapolutele found Jacob De Jesus in the end zone to give Cal the lead once again.
Despite having the lead for the rest of the game, the Golden Bears did a great job of keeping the Heels within reach. They committed nine penalties for 80 yards, and on offense they couldn’t stop dropping the ball. Fortunately for them UNC wasn’t able to capitalize — after scoring a field goal at the 6:14 mark of the second quarter, the Heels would not score again until the fourth quarter. When they did find their way to end zone, they successfully completed a two-point conversion, and suddenly things looked somewhat positive. Momentum was on their side, and Cal kept running into issues. That is when the really bad thing happened.
On UNC’s final drive of the game, Gio Lopez helped the team march down the field thanks to some successful plays and some penalties committed by the Golden Bears. On 2nd and 8 with 3:48 left on the clock, Lopez found Nathan Leacock on a crossing route and it looked like a touchdown was inevitable. However, at the absolute last second, Cal’s Brent Austin punched the ball out of Leacock’s hands just before he was about to score, and the Golden Bears were able to recover for a touchback. They killed as much clock as they possibly could, but gave the ball back to the Heels for one play. UNC executed the school yard lateral play to try to score, but the ball got swatted down and the game was over.
Anybody that didn’t see last night’s game could make the argument that there must have been some tangible improvement that kept this game from being a massacre. While there was some things that were a little better, ultimately Cal helped the Tar Heels more than they helped themselves. To the coaching staff’s credit, Freddie Kitchens and Steve Belichick both had some good play calls at times, and the players seemed a little more prepared than they were in the Clemson game. But ultimately this team is still who they are, which would’ve been the case even if Leacock held onto the ball long enough to give the Heels the win. Next up is Virginia next weekend at noon eastern time in Kenan Stadium.