UNC football head coach Mack Brown joined 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
Brown’s Tar Heels improved to 2-0 with a 38-20 win against Charlotte on Saturday in Carolina’s home opener. The game saw several contributions from younger Tar Heels, including redshirt sophomore quarterback Conner Harrell in just his second career start. Harrell accounted for three total touchdowns: two passing and one rushing. The game did see several star players either leave the game or not even dress with injuries: Kaimon Rucker, Bryson Nesbit and Omarion Hampton, to name a few.
Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On the win against Charlotte: After two games, you wanna be 2-0, so I’m proud of the guys. They played really hard on Saturday. Charlotte’s got some good players and we got a lot of guys banged up and it gave opportunities for other guys to step up that are younger and more inexperienced. And I thought they all did a good job. We played 75 guys during the game and I’m really proud of the way the guys stepped up.
On freshman running back Davion Gause’s performance: You see a freshman in practice and a lot of freshmen running backs can’t pass protect, so it’s hard to play them until they learn, because they didn’t have to do that in high school. They just carried the ball or caught the ball most of the time. But he is very mature. He was only on special teams at Minnesota, so this is the first action he’s had, and getting over a hundred yards was really special.
On the status of the injured Tar Heels: We really won’t know a lot until Tuesday’s practice. They’ll give us a medical report in the late afternoon today and then in the morning we’ll have a better idea if any of those guys are gonna be back or not. I’ve never had a game with that many great players that had to come out of the game. But again, it was good to see other guys step up fast.
On his message to the fans before Saturday’s game against North Carolina Central: Our fans did a great job. There were so many [ticket] requests. We had a waiting list, so that was great. Our fans were great. They stepped up and helped us win the game, and we’ll need the same thing on Saturday. I, I’m a of Trey Oliver, the head coach at North Carolina Central. He’s done a tremendous job. They won the Celebration Bowl a couple of years ago. They’re 1-1 as they get ready to come in here this week. And I’m sure like Charlotte, they’ll be really, really excited. When you’re playing in-state schools in North Carolina, being the University of North Carolina, everybody wants to beat you. So that won’t change on Saturday, I’m sure. We’ll have a great effort coming out of North Carolina Central.
Listen below for the full conversation with Mack Brown, and tune in to hear the segment live on Monday mornings each game week!
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Andy Mead
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