Sept. 21, 2003

For a second time in three years Carolina is 0-and-3 at the start of the season, but for a second straight game the Tar Heels could have easily won. An improving defense played harder and tougher at Wisconsin, and so did the special teams. Offensively, they weren't as good as the first two games, but Coach Bunting says the players have already put the hurt and disappointment of the Badger loss behind them.

"Football games sometime come down to two or three plays, four plays, five plays," the head coach pointed out, "and, in this one we were in the game for the most part. It was very noticeable on tape that our defense played harder, played tougher. We still had some errors in gap responsibility, but I'm pleased with the progress of the defense."

Wisconsin rolled up 402 yards of total offense, but the Badgers had to drive only a combined total of 92 yards to score 24 of their 38 points. Bunting said it was probably the fault of where the Tar Heels took possession and then had to punt or the punting game itself. "It just was not as good as it needs to be, and we've got to be better," he said.

"Our coverage was good, but John (Lafferty) just did not have the kind of day he's had the two previous games. I had scheduled David Wooldridge to take the third punt, but we weren't going to put him if we were backed up. Turns out we only came up with a 38-yarder, so those things tend to put you in bad field position."

Carolina's punting average for the game was 32.7 yards, but the team's net punting was only 29.1 yards. It'll need to be a lot better Saturday in Raleigh after N.C. State had a net punting average of 36.3 yards in the win over Texas Tech. Chuck Amato said on his weekly TV show the Wolfpack's last five losses have come when his teams lost the kicking game.

Offensively, Bunting felt Carolina didn't play as well as the first two games in terms of finishing plays and making good decisions. "I like what we've been doing with our offense, and I don't want to tinker with it very much. I just thought we would be more complete on offense. We had some third-down problems again (3-of-11 with 10 of those plays being third-and-long. This season Carolina is 11-for-43 with 38 of those plays being third-and-long), we had a dropped pass which could have walked in for a score, we had a fumble inside our five-yard-line which really, really hurt. That was following a special team's penalty which was really a bad, bad play for us. Those things add up to an offense which kind of sputters here and there."

Darian Durant did not have his best game, but the Tar Heels can't depend on him to have a great game all of the time. Somebody has got to come up and make a big play when it's needed.

"Darian is having a great season, and he's going to have a great season," Bunting believes. "He really cares, he's grown up a great deal and he's a doggone good quarterback. It's not good that it happened, but he'll learn from that experience."

The head coach feels it's important for his team to compete every week, but now the Tar Heels have to take it to a different level.

"Certainly I will mention to the team that we were 0-and-3 in 2001," Bunting admitted. "I will probably also mention that one of the most significant wins in that year was the win over State in Raleigh. It was a huge win. To me it was probably the most important win of the season. In part because it's a big rivalry. In part because it's an ACC game."

He knows the Tar Heels will have to play their best game of the season, on both sides of the ball, just to hang with Phillip Rivers, T.A. McLendon and the rest of the Wolfpack at 2:00 p.m. in Carter-Finley Stadium.