Carolina will play its final game of 2024 in America’s Most Beloved Ballpark.

The Tar Heels received a bid to the Wasabi Fenway Bowl on Sunday and will face UConn. The game will be played on December 28 at 11 a.m. on ESPN.

UNC finished the 2024 regular season with a 6-6 record. This is the sixth straight year Carolina will compete in a bowl game, though the Tar Heels will have to do it this season without their head coach: Mack Brown was fired in November. In his stead, tight ends coach and run game coordinator Freddie Kitchens will serve as interim head coach for the bowl game. Carolina has not won a bowl game since 2019.

The Huskies will bring an 8-4 record into the bowl game, though they are 0-3 against ACC opponents this season, with losses to Duke, Wake Forest and Syracuse. Carolina and UConn have faced off three times before, with the Tar Heels winning each time: a 48-21 win in 1990 in Chapel Hill and then both installments of a home-and-home series in 2008 and 2009. UNC won 38-12 in Kenan Stadium in 2008 and then 12-10 in Connecticut the next year.

As the name suggests, the Fenway Bowl is played in Boston’s Fenway Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox. The Tar Heels have experience playing bowl games in MLB stadiums, having played the 2022 Holiday Bowl in Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres.

 

Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward


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