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CHAPEL HILL – The Tar Heels won’t overlook Charlotte this weekend. They may not look too much at them at all.
At least not in the manner they may have approached facing opponents they were expected to beat with little resistance.
The truth is North Carolina hasn’t always taken care of business when heaving favorites in recent years. UNC Coach Mack Brown openly points this out, and it’s why the Tar Heels’ focus is themselves this week, not so much the 49ers, who visit Kenan Stadium on Saturday for a 3:30 kickoff.
“We’re playing to a standard that North Carolina needs to play to,” Brown said Monday during his weekly press conference. “We’ve won some games we shouldn’t have won around here and we lost some games we should have won right here.
“So, we’re playing to a standard to be the best we can be, and we’re not talking about who we play for the rest of the year.”
The old way cost the Tar Heels dearly last year when a 6-0 UNC club was stunned at home by a Virginia team that finished 3-9. Two years ago, a 9-1 Carolina team lost at home to a Georgia Tech squad that went 5-7. A loss at home to Appalachian State in 2019, at Virginia in 2020, and a blowout loss at Georgia Tech in 2021 are other examples of the Tar Heels not being totally dialed in and dropping games they should have won.
Teams get upset sometimes. It happens. But by turning more a focus inward should lessen those chances, some of the Heels say.
“Coach is right, we’ve won some games that a lot of people did not see us as the favorite and we won, and we also lost some games that we were the favorite and we didn’t win…,” graduate defensive stalwart Kaimon Rucker said. “But now we’re in a new time to where it’s like now we’re competing for a standard.
“We’re holding ourselves accountable, holding ourselves accountable to a higher standard than what we’ve had in the past.”
Charlotte comes in as a bit of an unknown. Three former Tar Heels – Justin Olson, Dontae Balfour, and Ja’Qurious Conley – are on the roster. In fact, 22 of the 49ers’ one-two depth chart includes players that began their college careers at power conference programs.
While they lost 30-7 last weekend at home to James Madison, and have had just one winning season since resurrecting football in 2013, the 49ers and first-year coach Biff Poggi could present some problems for a UNC team ushering in a new quarterback and with a green offensive line.
That’s why this Saturday, and to a degree every week, is about the Heels.
“We’re not going to worry about the opponent one week, two weeks from now, we’re only going to worry about the opponent of the week,” Rucker said. “At the end of the day, we’re only facing ourselves… We never got beat physically, it’s just that we beat ourselves.”
That will be put to test this weekend.
