In one of my “12 for 12″ posts, where I talked about what needed to go right in order for this season to be a good one, no matter the final record, I blogged about the freshmen on the North Carolina football squad. Well, that core of players did not disappoint in game one versus in state opponent Elon. And while I will post some of the stats below they say that a picture says a 1,000 words, so I guess a YouTube video might say a lot more…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkaldW8LBu4&version=3&hl=en_US]
…Quinshad Davis did a heck of a job catching the ball in this pass, the only one that he caught in the game. Listening to anyone close to this squad all agree that Davis is going to be a special player in Chapel Hill. Along with Davis another quartet of freshmen caught passes in the game against Elon, all of them just one, but that is not bad when you think that no one caught more than three passes in that game.
Five of the fourteen receivers that caught passes in Saturday’s game were freshmen, nabbing five of the twenty completion by the UNC quarterbacks
When head coach Larry Fedora took out Giovani Bernard after he had racked up over 200 overall yards and three touchdowns the coaching staff put four players in the backfield, of them two were freshmen. Romar Morris touched the ball ten times for 49 yards while Travis Riley ran the ball six times for 16 yds in all. To be noted both of these young men also caught a pass in this game.
In all the freshmen had over a third of the carries in the games against Elon
And finally, after 2 and a half quarters, when coach Fedora pulled his starting quarterback, Bryn Renner, it was another freshman to hit the gridiron for Carolina. And while Marquise Williams did nothing special, going five for six for 27 yards in all, what he did not do is make mistakes. For a freshman, entering a college game for the first time ever, that should be more than enough.
Without a doubt as the season progresses we might not see as much of the freshmen doing all that they did in the first game of the season, but it is also nice to know that North Carolina football has the refined talent to play this season and has the raw talent to build for the future. For both the team and the fan base the hope is that they can get these young men into games as the season progresses. Fortunately with the spread offense the possibility of a lot of receivers to see ball thrown at them, while in the back field it is going to be tough to take reps from someone like Bernard or from Brenner unless the game is lopsided as it was on Saturday. For more information about Carolina football and/or basketball check back often at isportsweb!