Carolina on a 4-game losing streak, mourning loss of Tylee Craft

By Jerry Ratcliffe

North Carolina will be riding a four-game losing streak heading into Charlottesville on Saturday for another chapter in “The South’s Oldest Rivalry,” but the Tar Heels (3-4 overall, 0-3 ACC) will be treating the Virginia game as a new start.

Mack Brown said at his weekly press conference on Monday that his team has not thrown in the towel. Coming off a bye week, a somber week in Chapel Hill as the Heels mourned the loss of wide receiver Tylee Craft, Carolina’s team attended the the funeral of 23-year-old Craft, who died on Oct. 12 from cancer.

With five games remaining, Brown hopes his Heels can turn their season around.

“You look at games across the country and they’re coming down to who makes the plays at the end, and that’s what we haven’t done for the last three [games],” Brown said. “We’ve got to do that. That’s it. We can either win the last five games or we can lose the last five games.”

The Tar Heels have back-to-back road games at Virginia and Florida State before returning home against Wake Forest, then travel to Boston College and finish the season at home against longtime rival NC State.

Carolina is a 4.5- to 5.5-point underdog, depending on your favorite oddsmaker for Saturday’s game (noon, The CW Network). The Tar Heels have traditionally struggled against the Cavaliers at Scott Stadium.

UNC will be playing with a heavy heart this weekend in the wake of Craft’s passing.

“We’re not going to forget about Tylee, for sure,” Brown said. “But we are going to move forward and grow with his legacy, but make sure we continue to grow as a team.”

The Tar Heels are still a dangerous football team, particularly on offense, averaging 31 points per game. Their downfall, as has largely been the case throughout the Brown era Part 2, has been defense, giving up 30 points per game.

The worst performance was the 70-50 home loss to JMU, the beginning of Carolina’s four-game spiral. On the tail end of that streak was the Heels’ last outing, a last-second loss against Georgia Tech.

“Awful day … absolutely devastating,” is how Brown described that defeat, a game that was tied at 34-all until Tech’s Jamal Haynes took it 68 yards for a game-winning touchdown in the waning seconds.

“Then you take a devastating loss and turn it into a discussion about a player who has lost his life,” Brown said.

The Hall of Fame coach said this season was the strangest of his illustrious career, including losing starting quarterback Max Johnson to a broken leg in the season opener.

“I feel like our program is as good as any in the country off the field,” Brown said. “Now, we’ve got to go back and start winning football.”