Tar Heels kicker Orner ties record with three field goals of more than 50 yards
Squinting as hard as he could, all Dan Orner could see was a blur of orange and blue.
As he glared through the uprights in the Carrier Dome on Saturday night, Orner stood 52 yards from his first collegiate field goal — four years removed from his last attempt in a game.
“It seemed like it was really far,” Orner said. “I couldn’t tell whether there were boys or girls in the stands.”
Orner connected on that first field goal and later hit two more (51 and 55 yards) as North Carolina beat Syracuse, 30-22. Orner’s three field goals of more than 50 yards tied an NCAA Division-I record.
“The guy who kept us in the game was Danny Orner,” UNC head coach John Bunting said. “He kept everybody’s spirits alive and kept everybody on the sideline active.”
Indeed, after Orner’s 55-yarder with 8:56 left in the third quarter put UNC up, 16-14, the 5-foot-7, 170-pound kicker made a beeline for the sideline, kicking up his heels and pumping his fist.
In pregame warmups, Bunting asked Orner how far he could kick, and Orner responded by hitting a 60-yarder.
Orner had plenty of time to kick his three 50-plus-yarders, in part because SU thought UNC might fake the field goals.
“We didn’t pressure them as much as we would’ve liked to,” SU head coach Paul Pasqualoni said.
Syracuse defensive back Will Hunter saw it differently.
“It’s not that we were afraid of the fake,” Hunter said. “We were just confused because we thought they had their punter on the field when it was their field goal kicker.”
When asked to explain the gaffe, Hunter said, “We just weren’t prepared. It was a mix-up. I don’t control that.”
The Orangemen also might have been thrown off by Orner’s jersey number. The kicker is listed as No. 11 in the UNC media guide but wore No. 10 on Saturday.
Orner’s jersey colors aren’t the only things that have changed since his last visit to the Dome. He played a game there in 1998, during his senior year at Warwick High School.
Thirty of Orner’s family and friends made the four-hour drive for the game, the kicker’s first game action since high school. Orner attended Michigan State for two years but never saw action and transferred in May 2001.
“This game was kind of a breakout for me,” said Orner, whose 55-yarder was a school record.
After sitting out last year, Orner, a junior, battled this summer with David Woolridge and Topher Roberts for the starting job. Bunting named Orner the starter just two days before UNC’s opener against Miami (Ohio).
The coach praised Orner’s ability to get the ball up quickly on field-goal attempts, making his kicks harder to block. Orner’s first two field goals easily cleared the uprights, and his third snuck through by 10 feet.
“When we came here to practice on Friday, I kicked about 20 field goals and only missed one,” he said. “I’m pretty much in a groove right now, not really asking questions, just kind of letting it flow.”
