Up-tempo UNC quickens pace in short week before Pitt

North Carolina coach Larry Fedora wasn’t exactly sure on Monday how late he was in the office on Saturday night, only that “it was late,” he said, “and then it was back up early.”

Late nights in the offices, ones illuminated by the light of a film playing on a screen, have long been part of the coaching profession. The norm. But those nights are longer, more crammed with work and perhaps more intense when a team faces a short work week, like the Tar Heels do this week.

They travel on Wednesday to Pittsburgh, where on Thursday night they’ll play at Pitt in a nationally televised game that doesn’t lack for high stakes and importance. A victory would leave UNC in first place in the ACC’s Coastal Division – a dynamic that has added urgency to its preparation.

After his team’s 26-13 victory against Virginia on Saturday night, Fedora met with his players, spoke with some recruits, fulfilled his media obligations and then “went straight into the office,” he said.

“(I) kissed my wife goodbye, and my daughters, and went into the staff room and started working,” Fedora said. “Immediately. I did have a Chick-fil-A thing that they had sitting in there for me. I ate that while I was watching film.”

He didn’t exactly have time to prepare a meal. Fedora’s coaching staff joined him in the meeting room and remained there until sometime between 11:30 p.m. and midnight, said Chris Kapilovic, the Tar Heels’ offensive line coach. And then they were all back at 6:30 the next morning.

In the ACC, such a condensed routine is not uncommon amid a short week. Thursday night games have long been a part of the conference’s television rights contract with ESPN, though, sometimes, a team might have an off week the weekend before playing on a Thursday.

It didn’t happen that way this season for UNC. Or for Pitt, for that matter, which defeated Syracuse on Saturday. The Panthers will have something of an advantage, at least in theory, in that they don’t have to add a travel day to their schedule this week.

UNC, meanwhile, will go through a quick practice Wednesday morning before boarding a plane. Wednesdays, usually, are the Tar Heels’ second full practice day of the week.

Short weeks before Thursday night games create their own set of challenges for coaches and players. For coaches, it means less time to digest what happened in the previous game – Fedora said on Monday he still hadn’t watched film of his team’s victory against Virginia – and less time to game-plan for the next opponent. For players, it means less time to gain an understanding of what they’ll be facing.

But, then again, there are some hidden advantages, too.

“I enjoy it,” Ryan Switzer, the junior receiver, said with a smile, “because we don’t (have) to run so much during the week.”

Practices during short weeks also tend to be less physical than usual given that some players are still recovering from the previous weekend. That’s why Fedora gave his players off Sunday, which is usually the day they’ll come in and go through a practice dedicated to correcting mistakes.

There was no such practice this week. When Fedora and his staff returned to the Kenan Football Center early Sunday morning they spent the rest of that day designing their game plan for Pitt.

Ordinarily, they might have worked on that during the preseason, Fedora said. They couldn’t this season, though, because Pat Narduzzi, the former defensive coordinator at Michigan State, is in his first season as Pitt’s head coach.

It was impossible to know what a Narduzzi-coached Pitt team would look like, Fedora said. So UNC didn’t have a chance to prepare early for the Panthers – not in the preseason and not last week while the Tar Heels were getting ready for Virginia.

Fedora said on Monday that he’d be “scared to death” of looking ahead to Pitt before this week. So he began looking ahead to the Panthers only after the Virginia game, which left him with a late Saturday night and a long Sunday before a shorter-than-normal week of practice.

“Everything’s got to be sped up,” Fedora said, “Because … normally what you do on Sunday, we have to do on Saturday night, and after our game. And then you come in on Sunday, early in the morning, and you try to get everything done for Monday what you would normally do on a Monday.”

And then there’s everything else, too, that doesn’t just disappear because it’s a short week. Family responsibilities at home for coaches. Classwork for players. Marquise Williams, the fifth-year senior quarterback, said he had two class papers due before Thursday – plus everything else he had to do to prepare for one of UNC’s most important games in recent memory.

“It’s just cramming,” Williams said.

The Tar Heels, at least, don’t lack for experience operating at a quick tempo. The word “fast” makes up one-third of Fedora’s “smart, fast, physical” motto – though weeks like this probably aren’t what he had in mind when he came up with it.

Known for his penchant for consuming Red Bull, the caffeinated energy drink, Fedora was asked on Monday how many he had during that late night after the Virginia game. He professed not to know – “I don’t keep track of those,” he said – but didn’t dismiss the thought that he’d had a large quantity.

“Maybe so,” he said with a laugh. “I wasn’t the only one.”

This story was originally published October 26, 2015 at 9:10 PM with the headline "Up-tempo UNC quickens pace in short week before Pitt."