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For several reasons, it was a disheartening loss in the Mayo Bowl.
We can all agree that college football has changed radically over the last few years. Take the last time the Tar Heels played in the Charlotte bowl, which rewards the winning coach with a bucket of mayonnaise over his head.
That is the only reason Mack Brown might be glad his team didn’t win. But he had to know it was a very long shot because of how many players missed the game. Two years ago, Carolina played even worse in the same bowl, but still had its NFL-bound quarterback for a 6-6 team that wound up 6-7.
The defense has continued to get bad reviews this season to the point where Brown has to make more changes to his staff. But he has said so the last few years, and sure enough the Heels gave up a 75-yard touchdown pass on West Virginia’s first snap and went on to a wire-to-wire loss, 30-10.
“We put the defense in an awful position three times,” Brown said, but winning the coin toss and deferring was exactly what they wanted, with the opponent starting on its own 25-yard line.
“We knew we had to win the turnover battle to win the game and we didn’t,” Brown added. “Two of them we were headed in for scores, so that’s 14 points we lost. And we had to win the kicking game and they returned a punt for a (78-yard) touchdown. You can’t do that, especially when undermanned on offense.”
Granted, his fifth team of Mack 2.0 looked like it cared. But it made the same miscues as all season. Young quarterback Conner Harrell played well enough to believe he may be pretty good next fall, if he beats out a transfer from Texas A&M.
The Mountaineers’ 5-11 QB had 292 yards of total offense and looked too fast and shifty for Gene Chizik’s depleted defense. Carolina had more first downs and converted more third downs with almost 10 more minutes of possession but managed one touchdown and failed to score in the second half.
Maybe Brown doesn’t realize that he has talked about “getting over the hump” for the last four years, and fans who faithfully support his program must be getting tired of it with good recruiting class after good recruiting class.
The crowd of 42,925 (58 percent of capacity) was made up of more Old Gold and Blue than Carolina blue. And UNC knows how few of the guaranteed tickets it sold and will take a far worse bath than a bucket of mayonnaise.
UNC released an ill-timed “renew your season tickets” email at 4:30, one hour before kickoff. Brown dubbed it the “New Opportunity Bowl.” Neither is likely to get a good return as Carolina continues on the wrong side of the hump.
Maybe 8-5 is “pretty good around here” but not the way it ended with a fourth straight bowl loss.
Photo via AP Photo/Chris Carlson.
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