UNC seeks statement victory on national stage at Pitt

Several times during Larry Fedora’s tenure at North Carolina his team has been presented with the kind of opportunity it has on Thursday night at Pittsburgh, and several times his team has failed.

At South Carolina in 2013. At home against Miami later that same season. Against South Carolina in Charlotte to start this season.

All nationally televised, Thursday night games. All opportunities to earn momentum-building victories. All defeats.

And now comes an opportunity as meaningful as all the rest, if not more so: another nationally televised, Thursday night game – this time to determine which team, perhaps, enters the final month of the season as the favorite in the ACC’s Coastal Division.

“Everbody is watching,” Fedora said earlier this week. “Thursday night is college football night now. So, yeah – everybody will be watching it. We have an opportunity to show who we really are.”

The Tar Heels had the same chance earlier this season during their season-opening, Thursday night game against South Carolina. And in that one, UNC had plenty of chances but came undone amid three turnovers and two end-zone interceptions.

Mistakes, especially critical ones late, doomed the Tar Heels in that Thursday night loss against Miami two years ago. And that came after a noncompetitive defeat at South Carolina, in front of a national television audience, to start that season.

And so the kind of stage on which UNC will find itself on Thursday night hasn’t been kind to the Tar Heels, though they did manage a dominant road victory at Duke last season in a nationally televised Thursday night game. That game, though, didn’t come with stakes nearly as high as this one at Pitt.

Fedora during the past couple of months has often dismissed comparisons to past futility. Asked before his team’s dramatic 38-28 victory at Georgia Tech about UNC’s long losing streak there, Fedora was quick to note that the 2015 Tar Heels had never lost a game in Atlanta.

They have, however, failed to capitalize on the kind of opportunity they have now. It happened at the start of the season against South Carolina.

Time to show it

The trip to Pitt, then, represents something of an opportunity for redemption – a chance to prove what the Tar Heels already believe about themselves. Ryan Switzer, the junior UNC receiver, was quick to point to UNC’s six-game winning streak as proof of how far the Tar Heels have come since late August.

Now it’s time to show it, he said, on the road in a matchup of teams that are undefeated in the Coastal Division.

“It’s another chance, another opportunity to put Carolina football on the map against a ranked opponent on the road,” Switzer said of the challenge at Pitt. “A big ACC Coastal game. I mean, I can go on and on about the list of implications that this game has.”

A victory at Pitt would not only put UNC in first place in the Coastal – a half-game ahead of Duke, which is also undefeated – but it’d boost the Tar Heels’ national credibility. They’re the only one-loss team from a Power 5 conference that’s not nationally ranked.

‘Make people respect us’

That fact hasn’t been lost on Marquise Williams, the fifth-year senior quarterback. Several times this season, he has noted the lack of attention UNC receives in football and his desire to help change the perception that surrounds the program.

“We feel like we don’t get a lot of recognition,” Williams said. “But like I say, we’ve just got to go out and win football games and make people respect us and make people recognize what we’re doing here is special, and that’s the main focus.”

UNC began the season with aspirations of proving itself on a national stage. Since that disappointing performance against South Carolina, the Tar Heels have won six consecutive games. But they’ve mostly done it amid anonymity and against competition that has endured no shortage of struggles.

The circumstances are different on Thursday night. The Tar Heels will be playing on a prime time national stage for the first time since the start of the season. They will be playing a team that’s atop the Coastal Division standings, instead of near the bottom.

Switzer, the receiver, didn’t hesitate to characterize Thursday night as a must-win for his team. And for a variety of reasons: UNC’s place in the division standings, its desire to break through a cycle of mediocrity.

“If we want to accomplish what we want to accomplish, yeah,” Switzer said when asked if UNC needed a statement victory. “I mean, we can’t afford to lose a game from here on out.

“This opportunity that we have Thursday night presents a great challenge with Pitt being undefeated in the Coastal and how big a splash they’ve made thus far this year. So we definitely need this.”

The question is whether, for a change, UNC will satisfy its desire.

This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 5:42 PM with the headline "UNC seeks statement victory on national stage at Pitt."