bgorman@heraldsun.com; 419-6668
CHAPEL HILL -- No one is more surprised by the shaky kicking of North Carolina's Casey Barth this season than the sophomore from Wilmington.
Barth is 4-of-7 in field goals this season, including a miss against Georgia Tech on Saturday that could have given his team their first points of the game and some momentum.
Even though Barth has made all three field goal attempts from between 20 and 29 yards, he has missed both from the 30- to 39-yard range. His other missed attempt was from 45 yards.
"I guess I'm just getting a little antsy," said Barth, who also missed an extra point after being perfect a year ago. "In practice, I make just about everything, so it's kind of frustrating when I'm going out there and not hitting the ones I know I can hit."
Barth, who has missed a field goal in each of the past three games, said he has been raising his head too soon and not finishing the kick, but mostly he's been struggling mentally not technically. He said kicking is 90 percent mental, and the best way to prepare for games is to visualize your kicks.
It's a trick he picked up from older brother Connor Barth, a former UNC kicker who went through his own sophomore slump when he made just 11 of 21 field goals in 2005.
"[Connor] talked to me a lot after the game, on Saturday and Sunday, just about the mental part," said Casey, who always talks to his brother before and after games. "Like visualizing the night before, he said that really helps him a lot. He actually saw a sport psychologist, and she really helped him with the visualizing part and that really gave him a lot more confidence in the games."
UNC coach Butch Davis said the coaching staff has full confidence in Barth and that he needs to block out his previous kicks.
"I know that he's mad at himself," Davis said. "I think any kicker would be. Sometimes kickers are like quarterbacks -- they're their own worst critics. They nitpick. They want to be perfect, and I know he wants to be perfect. He wants to make every kick."
It also doesn't help that Barth has had a different snapper for each of first three games of the season. Senior Lowell Dyer started the season as the deep snapper for field goals and extra points, but he was injured after the first game. Trevor Stuart, who was the snapper for punts, took over Dyer's duties, but after playing against Connecticut, he was injured in the next game against East Carolina.
Junior Mark House came in for Stuart during the ECU game and was the snapper in the game against Georgia Tech.
Barth said that House is a fast snapper, and the pair are getting more comfortable with each other in practice. They also were high school teammates at Wilmington Hoggard, and House was the primary snapper for the first half of the 2008 season.
"We've had three different snappers on field goals, so I've been trying to get used to that," Barth said. "For the past two weeks, it's helped out a lot because we've worked with one and he's really good."
But even though Barth has been working with a snapping carousel, he said that is not solely to blame for his kicking woes. He said he needs to stop thinking so much and just kick the ball.
"It's just tough because you can't really prepare for a game situation," Barth said. "I just got to get into the mental part of it more -- seeing the kick the night before, visualize it before the game, [visualize] what's going to happen."
