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Social media went crazy over the loss to Virginia, particularly on the head coach.
“It all falls on me, it’s my fault,” Mack Brown said Monday. “I hired every coach and staff member here. I have recruited every player that’s here. I make the decisions for everything we do.”
Brown, apparently, could not do anything about a half-full student section because of fall break. Or convince his team that Virginia was much better than 1-5 and had an off week to prepare.
“They can put in a lot of new stuff, be fresh when they’re coming in, they’ve got absolutely no pressure,” he said. “There was no buzz about the game. There were all kinds of check marks that say this was going to be a tough one and a handful, and nobody thought it was. And that’s usually when you’re in trouble. They had their team more excited about playing than I had ours. They coached better than I coached. And that’s what happens.”
Brown, who is the active coach with the second-most wins (280) behind Alabama’s Nick Saban (287), has a track record for losing such games. Nationally known sportscaster Paul Finebaum said on his TV show that over his 15 seasons at UNC, Brown’s ranked teams have 11 losses to unranked opponents, seven of them since he returned in 2019. Beside Virginia, they were to Georgia Tech and NC State at home last year; at Virginia Tech and at Georgia Tech in 2021; at Florida State and at Virginia in 2020.
“It’s been great that I’ve had that many ranked teams,” Brown quipped. “That’s pretty cool. Paul’s given me a compliment. So I don’t worry about all that stuff. I try every week to win every game we’ve got.”
He added there are 10 one-loss teams among the Power 5 conferences, including Texas, Alabama, Penn State, Oregon, and Utah.
“So there’s some pretty good folks that we’re sitting with in the same group,” Brown said. “There are 14 two-loss teams. And Duke is one of those; they’ve lost to Florida State and Notre Dame, two really good teams. I got to see some of Duke when I got home, they’re really good. They had a quarterback who was struggling, and they still were up 10-0 at Florida State.”
Carolina has lost two of the last three games against Georgia Tech, Saturday night’s opponent in Atlanta, where Brown’s UNC team won in 2019 but the Jackets have won 10 of the last 12 meetings there.
“Atlanta hadn’t been good to the Tar Heels,” he said. “Everybody thinks we’ve got Miami’s number ’cause we’ve beaten them five in a row. Well, Georgia Tech’s had North Carolina’s number in Atlanta before I got here.
“That makes this a game people should project we lose, period. I flunked out of Vanderbilt, but it looks pretty good to me that we haven’t done very well down there.”
Featured image via Associated Press/Erik Verduzco
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