Heels handle mistake-prone ECU

GREENVILLE — Is it a fluke, a jinx, a case of the yips?

No one seems to know for sure, but East Carolina’s sudden habit of giving the ball away cost it any chance at a victory over a rival Saturday.

Giovani Bernard rushed for 146 yards and a touchdown and Bryn Renner passed for 230 yards and four scores as North Carolina rolled to a 35-20 win over the hapless Pirates before the largest crowd ever to watch a game at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

The Tar Heels (4-1) took advantage of four turnovers — all of them in the first half and two of them in the red zone — to grab control early and hold it as an announced crowd of 50,610 had its sails quickly flattened.

ECU quarterback Dominique Davis passed for 417 yards and two touchdowns, setting a school record for passing yards in a single game. But most of his damage came late, long after the Tar Heels had taken over.

The Pirates (1-3) have committed 11 turnovers in their past two games, seven of which came in a 28-23 Conference USA victory over UAB a week earlier.

Asked to explain the spike in mistakes, Davis, who threw two interceptions Saturday, was at a loss.

“Bad luck, I guess,” he said. “I really don’t know. But we’ll get it fixed.”

Touchdown passes by Renner — an 11-yarder to Jheranie Boyd and a 75-yard bomb to Erik Highsmith — served to capitalize on consecutive ECU turnovers in the first quarter, and the Tar Heels were off and running. They put up 326 total yards in the lopsided first half alone.

The Pirates outscored UNC 17-7 in the second half after trailing 28-3 at halftime. It was ECU’s largest halftime deficit since trailing 27-0 at then No. 5 West Virginia on Sept. 22, 2007.

Reggie Bullock’s fumble with 6:31 left in the first quarter — the Pirates’ third of the game — led to Highsmith’s score and left the ECU’s players scratching their heads.

“We probably (are) jinxed,” said Bullock, who rushed for 72 yards on 16 carries. “I really think that. It’s just crazy how (the game) started off. We all knew — this team, the coaching staff, some of the fans — we knew we could’ve won this game. It was just turnovers. That’s all it was.”

Bernard, who carried 24 times, picked up his 100th rushing yard just three plays into the second quarter. The freshman from Davie, Fla., averaged 6.1 yards per carry and became the first UNC player to rush for at least 100 yards in three straight games since Natrone Means in 1992.

The stands, packed to capacity on a crisp, early-fall night, were dark with black clothing and dotted with splashes of Carolina blue, a sartorial reflection of the divided loyalties among friends and families in the region.

Only one side has bragging rights until the teams meet again next season in Chapel Hill.

“Any time you’re 4-1, it’s fun,” Tar Heels interim coach Everett Withers said. “You have to force those turnovers when you face this kind of offense. The way to beat a team like this is to take the ball away.”

ECU receiver Lance Lewis caught 10 passes for 166 yards.

Davis hit Lewis with a 23-yard touchdown pass to shrink the Tar Heels’ lead to 28-10 with 5:20 remaining in the third quarter. The score capped a 12-play, 92-yard drive, ECU’s longest this season.

But after Michael Barbour’s second field goal, UNC answered with a methodical 14-play drive that consumed more than 8 1/2 minutes of the fourth quarter. Renner’s 4-yard touchdown pass to Dwight Jones gave the Tar Heels a 35-14 advantage with 6:55 left in the game.

Davis hit freshman Danny Webster, a Havelock native, with a 4-yard touchdown pass that proved inconsequential with 2:49 left. The score was the first of Webster’s career, but it came before a nearly empty stadium.

“We’ll learn from this game,” said second-year ECU coach Ruffin McNeill, whose team visits Houston for a C-USA game Saturday. “One thing I can take into the next game is that we’ve done a good job tonight of not giving up. It seems like a small thing, but to keep fighting, I was proud of that.”

Things were ugly for the Pirates from the beginning. They had a promising first possession hijacked by a Webster fumble. Their second possession ended when Davis was picked off by Tim Scott on the ECU 14-yard line.

The pick set up an 11-yard touchdown pass from Renner to Boyd for the game’s first score.

The Tar Heels made it 14-0 when ECU fumbled on its next possession and Renner hit Highsmith with a 75-yard touchdown bomb. Highsmith got Pirates cornerback Derek Blacknall spun around and found himself wide open as he streaked down the field.

The Pirates mustered just a 35-yard Barbour field goal in the first half. The kick made the score 21-3 with 7:40 left in the second quarter — after a false start penalty turned a third and 1 on UNC’s 13 into a third and 6.

It was but one of many mistakes that left ECU waiting ’til next year.

“You can’t have a lot of turnovers and expect to win the game every time,” Davis said. “UNC is a great defense, and they capitalized off our turnovers. Hats off to them. They did their job to win the game.”

NOTES: The stadium’s previous attendance record of 50,410 was set Oct. 16, 2010, when N.C. State visited. ... UNC leads the series 11-2-1. ... Davis broke David Garrard’s single-game passing yardage record of 414, set against Memphis in 1998. ECU has 17 turnovers in its four games.

David Hall can be reached at (252) 559-1086 or at dhall@freedomenc.com.