The North Carolina Tar Heels have won three-straight games and have officially clinched bowl eligibility this season. That’s an impressive feat for a team that had a four-game losing streak including being blown out by James Madison.
But instead of letting that trend continue, the Tar Heels rallied.
Now, they find themselves at 6-4 overall with two games left this season. Closing out strong against Boston College and then NC State before the bowl game will be huge. But before we turn the page to next week, let’s see what Mack Brown had to say about the Tar Heels’ big win on Saturday.
On Omarion Hampton
“All of these young people are very talented, or they wouldn’t be here. And you ask them why they play, they play because they’re very talented, but they have to love to compete, because that’s what they do at the highest level. And I told them before the game, you worked 350 days, for 13 Saturdays or 14 Saturdays. So it’s got to be so important to you, and you’ve got to be consistently good to be great. He is consistent with everything he does in his life. He eats right, he works out. He has no vices. He’s a good student, he’s a great person.
“He’s very unselfish when we weren’t moving the ball or blocking very well for him in the third quarter, he’s quiet, but I saw him slip down and go to every offensive lineman and just tap him on the head and say, ‘we’re good. Come on, let’s finish this thing.’ So he’s got such a gentle strength of leadership about him, but he’s one of the best players and people that I’ve ever been around. Really, really proud of what he’s accomplished. We’ve said before that he could have left here very easily in a time of NIL, where people are talking to your players and they’re leaving for greener grass. And he stayed here, and it’s worked for him too.”
via Inside Carolina
On bowl eligibility
“It’s not our goal. It’s an early goal, it’s not the ultimate goal, obviously. But when you’re 6-0 and 6-1 and get to a bowl, you kind of say, ‘hey, we knew that we’re we’re going to do that anyway. That’s fine, but now we’ve got other things.’ For this team to be in such a hole, very few teams, in my estimation, could have come out of this, and that means they’ve got great character. I’m so proud of the coaches that they’ve hung in there because they were in a hole and everything was negative. And then you lose a 23-year-old, that’s crushing. It didn’t happen very often in your life, and you never want it to happen. And you can take two different paths. You can go down and just quit, and you have plenty of excuses.
“And they didn’t do that. They kept their heads up, they kept fighting, they kept competing. I think that’s why they’re so proud tonight. And I told them two (wins) had been easy, this one wasn’t easy, but you kept your head up and you kept fighting. That’s what you’ve learned through all the turmoil and tribulation, through the season this year, and I’ve learned probably as much in the last six weeks as I’ve learned my whole life. And sometimes to see the stars, you’ve got to go through the darkness, and that’s kind of what we’ve done. And I like what’s happened with this team and how they’ve responded to it.”
via Inside Carolina
On the defense’s performance
“We’ve been a great defensive team now for three weeks, and we’ve done it. They’ve got the slow mesh, which is tough, and the running back’s a great player. He’s not a good player. He made us miss, I won’t say who it was, in the hole and ran for about 25 yards. And we’re right in the hole, and you look up and they hand it to him on the slow mesh and he’s made five yards. You can’t even see it. We’re all around it, We’re trying to knock them back. So I’m really, really proud. We, offensively, gave Wake Forest a really short field, like they did us at the 6-yard line with a fumble, which you can’t do. Especially when you’re up 24-10, that’s when we have to learn, at 24-10, they’re not a throwing team. If you take that drive and score, and you make it 31-10, then they have to go faster. They have to open it up. And that’s not who they are, and we didn’t do that, and that was a disappointment. But just really proud of Geoff Collins, the defensive staff. They’ve stopped the run, they’ve disrupted the quarterback.”
via Inside Carolina
On the locker room after the game
“When I was walking off the field and seeing the students all still there singing the fight song and seeing those guys so happy, and then as I was walking in the tunnel, one of our great players, that’s a senior, looked at another one and started screaming and said, ‘we are bowl eligible. Man, this is so cool.’ And I thought, you know, that’s why we have bowls. It’s been too easy for us to get there. We hadn’t finished, but this team is kind of on a mission to finish right, and that’s what we said in January, and that’s what they’re doing. We didn’t start right. I wish we could do both, but we haven’t learned to do that yet. But right now, they’re playing good football, and I’m really, really proud of them and I’m enjoying watching them play, watching them have fun.”
via Inside Carolina
On allowing four sacks in first quarter, then one rest of game
“I don’t know. I’ll have to go back and watch it. I was surprised, because we’ve protected so well, and we were running the ball so well. The two on the goal line were kind of I got mad at Chip (Lindsey). You’re on the four (yard line), and you got Omarion. I wouldn’t be dropping back. So, I had a little anger management issue there at that point, but that was two of them (sacks). But I didn’t think we protected very well. There were some guys wide open and he got hit or got rushed and he bounced a couple of balls to Kobe Paysour that were wide open. So we’ve got to go back and look at that.”
via Inside Carolina
This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire : What Mack Brown said after North Carolina’s win over Wake Forest
