2010 Virginia Cavaliers: Virginia vs North Carolina

One of the more stunning stats to come to light this season is that North Carolina hadn’t won at Virginia since 1981. Back when the ACC had eight and nine teams and the 12-team, split-division conference wasn’t remotely close to emerging, the Tar Heels and Cavaliers played virtually every year. After ACC expansion finally arrived in 2005, the teams were placed in the same division, so this is not a situation in which UNC and UVA only play at each other’s stadium once every six years or so. While Virginia has had some success during that time frame, especially in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, North Carolina has generally had an equal or better program than Thomas Jefferson’s school.

At long last, though, that mind-bending string of failure for Carolina is over. The Tar Heels broke that streak by beating the Wahoos on Saturday.

North Carolina, a preseason ACC contender before losing several key players, mostly on defense, to the John Blake-Gary Wichard agent-gate scandal, dominated the Cavaliers, who were outclassed and outmanned even against a decimated North Carolina team that was not playing most of its NFL-caliber defenders.

North Carolina wasted no time finding the end zone, as quarterback T.J. Yates hit Dwight Jones on a slant pattern and Jones ran the rest of the 81 yards for a 7-0 Tar Heel lead only 17 seconds into the game. Quarterback Marc Verica led Virginia down the field on a nice drive down to the UNC 8-yard line in response, but the drive stalled as Verica’s pass fell incomplete on third-and-five inside the 10, so Virginia was forced to settle for a 25-yard Robert Randolph field goal.

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Yates led UNC to a field goal of its own on the next drive, highlighted by a 46-yard completion to Zack Pianalto. After Carolina’s Tim Jackson picked off Verica on the next possession, Yates had a short field, starting his team’s subsequent drive at the UNC 49. He completed three passes to the ever-trusty Jones, including a 20-yard pitch-and-catch touchdown. Jones finished with 6 catches for a whopping 198 yards, with two touchdowns that both came in the first quarter, when the Tar Heels set a positive tone and let it be known that their 29-year losing drought at Scott Stadium would not extend to 30 years. Yates finished with 325 yards and three touchdowns in this game, just the latest display of excellence during a season in which he has surprised many with his solid play under center. Many ACC observers thought him to be a second-tier quarterback coming into the season, but Yates has countered that conventional (non-)wisdom.

Carolina’s third drive nearly put the game out of reach at 17-3. Perhaps UVA could have made it a game, but the Cavs drove into the UNC red zone on the next series, only for Verica to throw another INT, this one to Carolina’s Zach Brown.

UNC flipped the field after the pick and drove into the Virginia red zone, where kicker Casey Barth nailed a 34-yard field goal to end the drive and put UNC up by three scores, at 20-3. After a Virginia three-and-out, UNC had a two-play drive that put the game completely out of Virginia’s hands. Yates hit Jones on another long pass, but Jones was caught at the one, preventing his third touchdown of the game. Yates hit Zack Pianalto for a 1-yard touchdown pass on the next play, putting UNC up 27-3. That was all she wrote; unfortunately, Pianalto got injured later in the game and will miss North Carolina’s next ACC game against Miami (Florida), a crucial loss for coach Butch Davis’s team.

Virginia’s Keith Payne led all rushers with over 100 yards, but Yates and Jones’ long hookups and big yardage were the story of the evening... as was the end of a strange and substantial streak that bedeviled North Carolina in Charlottesville since 1981.

Virginia Cavaliers vs North Carolina Tar Heels Football Recap