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 and the Tar Heels endured another setback on Saturday, falling to Duke 21-20 after leading 20-0 in the third quarter. For Brown, it snaps a personal 13-game winning streak against the Blue Devils which stretched back to 1989. Now, Carolina sits at 3-2 overall and 0-1 in ACC play.
Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On the loss to Duke: Losing a game’s tough, but then you lose a rivalry game, it’s even tougher. And the Duke game had come down to the last drive of the game in three of the last five years. We were an underdog in the game, but it was supposed to be pretty even. It was a dead even game: we dominated the first half, they dominated the second half. And when you look at college football, it’s so crazy because the field goal at Minnesota didn’t go in. We were all excited and you still have to go back and there’s about five plays that matter in that game, and that made the difference in the game. Same thing on Saturday. You pick out five plays, and we make any of those five plays, we win the game. So we’ve just gotta continue to work hard and get better and make sure that we make those plays because Pitt’s gonna be really good coming in this weekend and it’ll be a huge challenge moving forward.
On positive takeaways: The positive is we can get a lot better on offense. I think we’re leading the league in total yards anyway, but we have a chance to get better there. Defensively, we’ve shown signs of being much better and we are better than we’ve been the last few years, but we’ve gotta make key plays in the second half. So those are both areas we can improve in. And our special teams were so good there in the first three weeks and then they’ve hurt us. They haven’t changed the game to a positive, the last two weeks, so we’ve got a lot on our plate. We’ve just gotta keep working and take the negatives and turn them into positives.
On the keys to victory this weekend: When I get frustrated, fans get frustrated, our players get frustrated, we’ve just gotta pull it together and everybody work in the same direction to get back on track. I really think this team, unlike our last few that didn’t finish right, can keep getting better and finish right. But we’ve gotta get turned back in a positive direction and all get back on the same page. And Saturday’s supposed to be a beautiful day. I can’t wait to get back in Kenan. And Pitt’s a great team. They’re probably the best all-around team that we’ve played this year, so it’ll be a huge challenge for us. But we’ve just gotta keep getting better.
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
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