North Carolina guard Willie Lampkin appeared to be wiping away tears with his uniform when it ended Saturday.
Noah Burnette, who wanted one more field-goal try, wanted a chance to win it, left the field angry, muttering.
Travis Shaw simply could not be corralled into the locker room, not for several minutes after the long walk that visitors must make at Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium. The loss was just too upsetting for the big defensive tackle as he paced about, paced about, as teammates tried to calm him down.
Losing to Duke 21-20 in the rivalry game, hearing the undefeated Blue Devils finally get to ring the Victory Bell, seeing Duke students jubilantly swarm the field was a bit too much for some of the Tar Heels.
“It’s awful,” UNC coach Mack Brown said. “I mean, you fight your guts out, unlike last week. And they fought their guts out and gave every ounce they could.”
One Duke sports motto is “bleeDblue.” This day, after their first loss to Duke since 2018, the guys in light blue were bleeding a little, the cut a deep one.
But in an odd way, coaches also know that when their players are emotional after a loss, when it’s as if they refuse to believe they were beaten, it can sometimes be a good thing, a good sign. It shows how much they care, how much a loss stings.
This one was a stinger. The Tar Heels led 17-0 at halftime in their ACC opener and 20-0 in the third quarter. They had put behind them the 70-50 nightmare of a loss to James Madison last week and were making the plays needed.
“I did tell the players, unlike last week, I thought they gave it everything they had, and they tried,” Brown said. “It was a great college football game that we came up short on. I’m proud of their effort.”
In the first half, the UNC defense was solid. The offense was good enough as quarterback Jacolby Criswell passed for two scores and Omarion Hampton pounded out some tough yardage. The Heels had the answers and the Blue Devils seemed to be guessing.
The Tar Heels did not have a lot of answers for how things turned in the second half, however. Not many.
“I thought we had a really good first half,” Brown said. “We were still inconsistent offensively. They’re really good on defense. We had trouble getting Omarion the normal yards and runs he gets, although he still gained over a hundred yards.
“But in the second half we had a struggling drive with a couple of big plays to start the second half, which really bothered me. I thought we’d come out and take over the game, which we should have in the third quarter, and we didn’t.”
Duke ran the ball, scored a touchdown, scored another one, gathered momentum and never lost it. The Tar Heels missed some tackles, allowed some explosive plays.
“Their ability to run the ball in the second half and our inability to run the ball was what changed the game,” Brown said.
After Duke took the 21-20 lead in the fourth quarter, the Devils had a fourth-and-1 at the UNC 45. Duke decided to punt, giving the Tar Heels one last possession in a one-point game.
“That last drive, I had one hundred percent full belief we were going to score,” said Criswell, who was 21 of 39 passing for 251 yards in the game.
The Heels reached the UNC 40, but Criswell then overthrew Bryson Nesbit on a deep pass down the right sideline. On the next play, he was hit as he threw, the fluttering pass picked off by Duke’s Tre Freeman to clinch it.
“We lost, but I have one hundred percent belief in the coaches and the players we’re going to get it done,” Criswell said. “You never want to lose games. But you lose one ACC game, there’s still hope. Our season’s not over.”
A week ago, Brown was so mad after the loss to JMU that he told the team in the locker room he would step aside if he was the problem. The team wouldn’t have it, everyone regrouped and prepared to go to Durham.
And lost, again. But this time, Brown said he had a different tone in the locker room.
“I thought they tried,” Brown said. “I thought everybody was into the game. Everybody knew how important the game was. Everybody knows how important this game is to us, our university and our fan base.
“So it wasn’t that they didn’t try. I’m really proud of their effort.”
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