North Carolina needed one of a number of plays to be different in order to upset Virginia Tech Thursday night. Instead, UNC fell 24-21 and needs a victory over Duke to have a winning season.

Any one of these plays would probably have led to a Tar Heels victory.

First, when it looked as if the Heels were going to go up 14-0, Ryan Houston fumbled inside the three yard line. Tech proceeded to go on an 18-play drive over 95 yards for the tying score.

During the drive, a missed tackle by Charles Brown allowed VT’s quarterback Logan Thomas to scramble 18 yards on third and 19. An illegal push forward by Hokie tackle Blake DeChristopher, that – per usual – was not called, allowed Thomas to get the first down on fourth and one after it appeared his forward progress had been stopped long enough for a whistle to blow the play dead.

Gio Bernard, who scored the first TD on a nifty run, got off a good run up past the 40 but it was called back for holding and the Heels ended up punting from inside their 20 yard line.

A penalty on Carolina’s punt team for touching the returner who was calling a fair catch put Tech deep in Carolina territory and they managed a field goal.

Bernard, Carolina’s star offensive player, was hit helmet to helmet and he suffered a concussion that kept him out the remainder of the game. No penalty was called.

The Tar Heels drove late in the first half. An apparent reception at the three with time running down was changed on the field to an incomplete pass. After a review, the video was inconclusive so the changed call on the field stood. Instead, Carolina had to try a 43-yard-field goal and it was wide left.

Late in the game, after the Heels had drawn to 24-21 with plenty of time left to score, Carolina tried an onside kickoff but Brown didn’t allow it to go the full 10 yards (and he could have and still recovered it) and the Hokies got the ball, essentially ending the game.

If any one of those plays had been different, Carolina may very well have won that game. The old cliche is that good teams get those kinds of breaks.

No. 1 North Carolina helped UNC-Asheville open its new arena but apparently didn’t impress the Asheville fans, some of whom chanted “overrated” as the game wound down for a 91-75 Tar Heels victory.

UNC coach Roy Williams, a native of Asheville, scheduled the rare in-state game against a non-ACC opponent as a favor and has even contributed money to the basketball offices.

“I didn’t think I’d be booed as much as I was in Asheville, North Carolina,” Williams said with a laugh. “But that’s ok. All’s fair in love and war and basketball I guess.”

For more on the game itself, please click here.

Junior forward Ben Speas tallied two goals and an assist helping Carolina to its third ACC Championship in school history as the Tar Heels pulled off the rare double with a 3-1 win over Boston College Sunday in Cary, N.C. The title game win gives the Tar Heels both the outright regular season and tournament titles for the first time in school history.

The Tar Heels jumped out to a 1-0 lead just before halftime when substitute Carlos McCrary headed home a cross from Ben Speas to put UNC in front. Rob Lovejoy worked his way around the defense on the right side of the field and fed a pass toward the top of the box that Speas settled.

Speas broke to his right and toward the end line and lofted a cross to the far post where McCrary was waiting. McCrary headed the ball to the near post and beat Boston College’s Justin Luthy for his third goal of the year and second of the ACC Tournament.

The Tar Heels looked content to take the 1-0 advantage into halftime but when Enzo Martinez was tripped up forty yards from goal Carolina took advantage of its opportunity.

Speas stood over the free kick and sent in a ball that was in-swinging toward the near post. Luthy came out of his goal to attempt to punch the ball away but ran into Matt Hedges and Rob Lovejoy and was unable to stop the ball as it bounced into the net for a 2-0 Carolina lead.

Carolina controlled possession throughout the contest but were caught off guard on a Boston College counter-attack in the 62nd minute. The Eagles played a ball in between a pair of Tar Heel defenders and Matt Hedges closed down in an attempt to make a tackle catching too much of an Eagle forward getting a yellow card and awarding BC with a dangerous free kick just outside the box.

Boston College’s Kyle Bekker took the free kick from 20 yards out and sent it toward the far post. The ball rocketed off the inside of the far post and found the back of the net to pull the Eagles within one at 2-1.

Redshirt junior forward Billy Schuler made his first appearance of the afternoon at the 64:02 mark when he came on to replace Carlos McCrary and immediately paid dividends for the Tar Heels.

Schuler made a run down the right side and cut around a defender before playing a ball across the face of the goal. Speas was Johnny-on-the-spot as he put away the pass for his second goal of the day and helped Carolina regain its two-goal lead.

Goalkeeper Scott Goodwin would make sure the lead would remain two over the final 25 minutes of the contest as the junior came up with three impressive saves for the Tar Heels.

In the 71st minute Colin Murphy was able to jump on a free ball at the top of the box but the charging Goodwin cut off Murphy’s angle and jumped on the ball. A little over eight minutes later, Isaac Taylor challenged Goodwin who was able to punch away the shot for a corner kick.

The 83rd minute saw the Eagles float a ball in from the right flank that Kevin Mejia attempted to flick on goal with his head but Goodwin read the play perfectly and jumped on the shot to keep the Tar Heels in front.

The win is the third ACC Championship in school history for the Tar Heels as the 2011 group joins the 1987 and 2000 teams as tournament champions. It also marks the first time in school history that Carolina has accomplished the double, winning both the ACC regular season and tournament titles. Carolina is the eighth team in ACC history to accomplish the double and the first since Boston College in 2007.

Carolina put five members on the ACC All-Tournament Team for the second straight year as Speas was named the ACC Tournament MVP as he joins Derek Missimo (1987) and Caleb Norkus (2000) as previous Tar Heel winners.

Joining Speas on the All-Tournament team were Enzo Martinez, Matt Hedges, Billy Schuler and Scott Goodwin.

The Tar Heels have officially punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament with the ACC title win but will learn their fate on Monday at 4:30 p.m. on NCAA.com when the NCAA Bracket is released.

ACC All-Tournament Team
Ben Speas – North Carolina (MVP)
Enzo Martinez – North Carolina
Matt Hedges – North Carolina
Billy Schuler – North Carolina
Scott Goodwin – North Carolina
Kyle Bekker – Boston College
Diego Medina-Mendez – Boston College
Colin Murphy – Boston College
Charlie Rugg – Boston College
Hunter Jumper – Virginia
Brian Span – Virginia
Luca Gimenez – Wake Forest

North Carolina completed its first mission of the year on the USS Carl Vinson Aircraft Carrier with a 67-55 over Michigan State on Veteran’s Day. (11/11)

Despite being outrebounded, the Tar Heels kept fighting and took a lead with five minutes left in the first half and never trailed again.

All-America Harrison Barnes led the way with 17 points, including three triples in the second half that kept the Spartans at bay. Barnes’ first three gave Carolina its biggest lead of the game up to that point at 43-27. The second gave Carolina its biggest lead of the game at 59-39.

But the biggest three was the third that stopped the bleeding after the Spartans had outscored the Heels 10-0 to draw the deficit to 10 at 59-40 with six minutes left. Barnes lifted in a three from the left side with 5:20 left to make it 62-49 and Michigan State never got closer than 11 the rest of the way.

For more on the game, please click here.

North Carolina coach Everett Withers, coming off a loss to N.C. State that will likely cost him any chance he had of winning the coaching spot permanently, says that his team needed a week off. The Tar Heels have a bye weekend before playing Virginia Tech next Thursday.

“It’s obviously good to have the bye week this week,” he said. “We’ve gone through training camp and then now having the bye week, we’ve had some injuries, some guys back. The kids need a little bit of time here to kind of get their legs back under them.

“We didn’t play very well last week offensively. I thought we played fairly well defensively last week. Obviously if you don’t score, you can’t win. We did not score. So we have to find a way during our bye week to get better on offense, clean up, get better on defense. We’re looking forward to the week off and preparing for a Thursday night game against a very, very talented Virginia Tech team.”

Q. Coach, what, if anything, update is there on Bryn Renner? How is he feeling coming off of concussion-like symptoms on Saturday?
COACH WITHERS: Bryn is progressing well. We’re not putting him out there in practice this week. We want to try to give him some time to fully recover. But he was out at practice yesterday throwing the ball around a little bit but not necessarily practicing. But we expect to have him. There’s a good chance he could practice tomorrow or Friday. We expect him to be ready to go when we start game preparation.

Q. Of all the things that went wrong offensively Saturday, what was the most disappointing thing to you?
COACH WITHERS: Well, the inability to sustain a rhythm on offense is probably the biggest. We’ve been able to run the ball, even though people have blitzed us, stacked the line of scrimmage, we’ve been able to have some success. As long as we continue to run the football, eventually the two- or three-yard gains turn into four- and five-yard gains. That didn’t happen for us Saturday. That was probably the most disappointing. We had too many missed assignments up front. We didn’t as an offense play like we needed to.

Q. Does that surprise you, that the offensive line missed that many assignments this deep in the season?
COACH WITHERS: You’re dealing with 18- to 22-year-olds. You never know what is the culprit, what is the underlying thing that happened. We tried to go back this week and really just work on fundamentals, the things that we know we can do good and get confidence back in what we’re doing.
You always chalk it up to there’s going to be that one game that you’re not in sync. Hopefully this was ours as far as the offensive line and we’ll be better for the rest of the season.

Q. You’ve had 10 games in the season. How is Gio Bernard holding up under the pounding of a long season? Did he get nicked up any more than usual Saturday?
COACH WITHERS: He did tweak his ankle a little bit Saturday, but he was able to tape it up and come back. He’s a tough young man, a very competitive young man. He wants to be out there. He wants to be at practice. We’ll try to take care of him this week. We’re not going to put him out there very much this week.
He’s held up well. I think he’s done a great job of holding up and being ready Saturday to play. It is a long season, especially for a kid that tore his ACL a year ago and really this is his first stint of playing. For him to go through 10 straight weeks of being a running back in this league in a running offense, I think he’s done very well.

Q. Dwight Jones is on a pace where he may challenge for the school’s all-time receiving records in receptions and yardage. Can you talk about what he brings to the table, why he’s taken the big step forward this year?
COACH WITHERS: Well, I think Dwight’s maturity level has really improved over the last two years. You could see the young man grow up, become more accountable and responsible for himself on and off the field. I think Dwight’s knowledge of what we want to do offensively is at its highest level.
He understands what people are trying to do to him. He understands what the defense each week is trying to do to him. He understands his responsibilities in the run game and in the pass game.
Once you take on a shift and responsibility of what you can handle, if you’re a talented player, then those things tend to happen for you. You tend to make more plays and the ball tends to get thrown to you a little bit more. I think it’s all that in one for Dwight.

Q. You mentioned how the off week comes at a good time to heal up. It’s awfully late. I think it’s the latest bye week in the ACC. Would you have rather seen it a little earlier, break the season up at a different place, or not?
COACH WITHERS: Well, you know what, most coaches would say yeah. I would tend to say yeah, we would have liked it to come a little bit earlier in the year. You say you got a bye week, but we don’t even have a complete bye week. We go play next Thursday night. We got a half a bye in my mind.
Yeah, we would have liked to have had it earlier in the year. When you go through training camp, an emotional training camp because of what happened at the beginning of the year in July, you go through an emotional training camp, then you start the season, it’s week after week after week, there’s all kinds of things going on in the media, the kids are trying to stay focused. At some point in time when you’re dealing with young people, you lose some of that focus.
I’ve been really proud of our kids for the most part. They’ve handled the stress and the grind of this year. This is an unusual year for this team and they’ve handled it. I would have liked to have had a break earlier so we could get them back recharged.
But it is what it is. The ACC’s made the schedule. TV controls a lot of things. It is what it is. We have to line up and play each Saturday.

Q. Could you talk about C.J. Feagles performance Saturday, where that competition between him and Thomas is in the off week?
COACH WITHERS: Obviously it will continue to go. It’s a competition every week. We felt like we needed to take a look at C.J. He’s punted before. We wanted to make sure that our operation times were correct. He had the best operation times prior to NC State. As we practice this week, we’ll evaluate the operation and distance this week in practice and we’ll see who will be our punter on Thursday night versus Virginia Tech.

Q. Do the three blocks earlier factor into the decision?
COACH WITHERS: I don’t think they factored into because they didn’t have one thing to do with operation time. They had to do with our shield, not getting their head in the right place.
I really believe the operation times and all that is important. But the operation time that C.J. brings, we would have liked to have had a little bit more distance in the punts. We understand the wind and the weather situation Saturday also, that he kicked into the wind some, too. It’s a competition. We want to get the best punter out there.

For the fourth straight year, supporters and fans of the University of North Carolina baseball program will have the opportunity to kick off the upcoming season with a memorable evening at the Diamond Heels’ First Pitch Dinner, scheduled for Jan. 28 at the brand new Loudermilk Center For Excellence on the UNC campus.

This year’s event will feature five Tar Heels that made their Major League debuts in 2011, including Seattle Mariners Player of the Year Dustin Ackley. Joining Ackley will be fellow Mariner Kyle Seager, Colorado Rockies right-hander Alex White, Oakland Athletics right-hander Andrew Carignan and Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Tim Federowicz.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to meet the 2012 Tar Heels and this year’s senior class will preview the upcoming season.

North Carolina looks a lot like the 2009 team that won the national championship. That team was also favored at the first of the year after all the players elected to return. It’s unusual for a top team to return all its players but Harrison Barnes, John Henson and Tyler Zeller – potential first round NBA picks last year – all decided to return to go after a national championship.

For Tar Heel fans, probably the only good thing about losing to Kentucky in the NCAA Elite Eight a year ago is that they’ll have another entire season to enjoy watching these players.

Sadly, no matter how good this team is, anything less than a national championship will be a disappointment. That pressure, along with integrating new talent into the chemistry of the team, will be the keys to the success of the 2011-2012 Tar Heels.

To read more please click here.