2010 Virginia Tech Hokies Football: Va. Tech @ North Carolina

For two and a half quarters, the North Carolina Tar Heels competed with the Virginia Tech Hokies on fairly even terms. Then they watched in disbelief as a shocking double-blunder prevented them from making a comeback against the ACC’s best team.

Yes, it’s been that kind of season for a North Carolina club that has been saddled by all sorts of off-field troubles and has battled bravely between the painted white lines. The Tar Heels are short on bodies and long on perseverance, but they just can’t make the kinds of plays that represent the difference between a decent team and an upper-tier team. The ballclub that resides on a higher plane than the Heels is the one that beat them by 16 points on Saturday, thanks to a special-teams train wreck that cast a long shadow over Kenan Stadium in week 11 of the college football season.

Though trailing by a 19-10 margin in the middle of the third quarter, the kids from Carolina still had a very legitimate chance of pulling off the kind of win that would have added a great deal of value to what has already been a remarkable season in Chapel Hill. Carolina entered this game with a modest 6-3 mark, but that record comes across as nothing short of amazing when one realizes that over a dozen UNC players have missed appreciable portions of this season due to injuries or suspensions. If Tar Heel head coach Butch Davis had a full complement of players at his disposal on both sides of the ball, the boys on Tobacco Road would have fielded a club worthy of a division and conference title in the ACC. Scandal and misfortune, combined with the newfound vigilance of the NCAA, got in the way of UNC’s biggest dreams. Yet, the fact remained that with a win over first-place Virginia Tech, Carolina could have been in position to win the ACC Coastal Division in the final two weeks of the regular season, provided that Tech lost one more conference game at Miami (FL) on Nov. 20. It was a minor miracle that North Carolina still had division-title aspirations heading into the middle of November, and in the third quarter of this game, UNC still had a puncher’s chance to come back.

> Check out our great selection of Virginia Tech Apparel & Merchandise!

Quarterback T.J. Yates had barely missed on a few downfield bombs to what remained of a hollowed-out receiving corps. As Virginia Tech prepared to punt with its modest nine-point lead in tow, Carolina was about to gain a fresh opportunity to reduce its deficit to one possession… in the third quarter. All things were possible for the Heels, but then a bizarre disaster struck and laid waste to their hopes of claiming the Coastal in 2010.

On a short Virginia Tech punt, UNC return man Da’Norris Searcy misjudged the bounce. He slipped as he moved to his right, but he pawed at the ball with his left hand. Replays were inconclusive in determining whether Searcy really did touch the ball, but what replays also showed was that Searcy sprinted for the ball after it bounced by his outstretched hand. That act suggested that Searcy had indeed grazed the odd-shaped piece of leather. Virginia Tech recovered the ball in real time, so when the replay booth confirmed that Searcy had touched the ball, the Hokies owned it deep in UNC territory. A few plays later, a touchdown pass by Tech quarterback Tyrod Taylor increased the Hokies’s lead to 16 points, and the fate of the Tar Heels was sealed against Tech’s defense, guided by the brilliant Bud Foster, one of the foremost defensive coordinators in the United States.

Virginia Tech just needs to split one of its last two games to clinch the Coastal, and North Carolina is left to wonder what might have been… just as it has done since the very first week of a distinctly snake-bitten 2010 season.

Virginia Tech Hokies @ North Carolina Tar Heels Football Recap