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ACC report Date published: 10/2/2008
BY JIM McCONNELL Cam Sexton thought his days of meaningful playing time at North Carolina had come to an end last season, when he was beaten out for the starting quarterback job by redshirt freshman T.J. Yates and attempted only one pass in 12 games. So when opportunity knocked--in the form of Yates' ankle injury against Virginia Tech--Sexton scrambled to open the door. Third on the depth chart just a couple weeks ago, Sexton came off the bench to replace struggling freshman Mike Paulus last Saturday and led North Carolina to a stirring 28-24 victory over Miami. He completed 11 of 19 passes for 243 yards and two touchdowns as the Tar Heels rallied from a 14-point deficit and stunned the Hurricanes, who were playing their first home game in Dolphin Stadium. "Cam's a really good kid," North Carolina coach Butch Davis said during yesterday's weekly ACC coaches teleconference. "As impressive as his performance was during the course of the ball game, I was almost equally as impressed with how humble he was after the game. "You couldn't ask for a player to handle the situation any better than what he did. I think it speaks to the character and the integrity of the kid that he's handled the last 18 months pretty much exactly the same way." Davis said that Sexton, who started five games in 2006, clearly had made the most of his practice reps because he was ready to play well when called upon. "The plays that we ran last week are the plays that we've been running for 18 months. He probably had 300 or 400 opportunities to run a lot of those same plays in two straight spring practices and two training camps and as a backup or third-team quarterback, so now it's just implementing those things," Davis added. "If he would have wasted that body of work of practice opportunities prior to last week, he probably wouldn't have had the performance that he had." TACKLING MACHINE Pronouncing his last name may be more difficult than blocking him, and that's saying something when you're talking about Duke linebacker Michael Tauiliili. The senior from Houston was named national defensive player of the week by the Walter Camp Football Foundation after recording a career-high 16 tackles in the Blue Devils' 31-3 rout of Virginia last Saturday in Durham, N.C.
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