The battered and startled Jackets look to recover from their road loss against a basketball school coming off a close week-one loss by hitting the road to see a … yep.
Comparing resumes: Tech looked about as bad in its opener as a 31-point winner can look; South Carolina State ran up the middle with little caution (Tech fans blamed Joshua Nesbitt's wide receivers), and Kansas further exploited the Gold and White's double-stuf interior while displaying disciplined defense. North Carolina turned in a (pardon the next word) inspiring performance against LSU, during which the Heels fell behind by 20 at halftime after sliding half its special teams onto its starting defense and ended up a fingertip away from victory.
Series history: The teams have split during Paul Johnson's two-year tenure, with Butch Davis chipping in another Tar Heel loss during his first year. If Davis wins again, he'll become the first UNC coach to beat Tech twice since Mack Brown. In 1990 Carolina tied Tech 13-13, the only blemish on an otherwise perfect national championship season. Colorado can make the same claim, of course, if you sub Carolina out for Tennessee, Illinois, and Missouri and change two of those to losses.
Last meeting: Tech pulled off a round-the-clocker, winning 24-7 in Atlanta. Tech also [calling for information joke], piling up 411 yards. Nesbitt's completion percentage bested T.J. Yates' by 21.3 percent, but Morgan Burnett won't be around to harass Yates this time.
Tar Heels to watch: The ones on the sideline studying the University of North Carolina course catalog, Dodd willing. If Carolina gets some good news in the next four days, then the Heel assemblage to watch will be the entire defense as it stones the flexbone.
Fun fact: As retweeted by one-third of sports Twitter:
GT's Paul Johnson is the leader in the clubhouse for quote of the year, on injury report: "We didn’t play hard enough to get injured."
Will Brinson
willbrinson
Also monitoring: The status of those twelve currently suspended Tar Heels and any media members who ask Paul Johnson if his offense only works against teams from mountainous regions, after losses to Iowa and Kansas.
How we feel about all this:This stream began even before the stream about Tech’s opening-day opponent, due to North Carolina’s exciting scholarly summer endeavors. If you’d like to see what abstract concepts like naivete and presumptuousness look like when presented in text and HTML, click here. If Carolina wins after its bye, we'll be treated to another round of the week-to-prepare-for-Johnson meme, as charted by FTRS here.
Vegas says: Even, believe it or not.
I'd like to add a poll for this one, but we're already mid-stream. Thus, leave your predictions in the comments. Tech by 3? Carolina by 10? Marvin Austin for class president?