CHAPEL HILL – Eleven games into Mack Brown’s first season back as North Carolina’s football coach, and everything comes down to the Tar Heels’ game at N.C. State on Saturday night.

At 5-6, if the Heels defeat the Wolfpack they will qualify for a bowl game. Lose and the season is over.

Brown met with the media Monday morning at the Kenan Football Center for his weekly press conference. He hit on numerous topics, among them rivalry games, why he was so proud of last week’s preparation and performance against Mercer, playing lots of players in that game, the process of losing close games before learning to win them, and quite a bit on Sam Howell.

Here is Brown’s entire press conference along with some excerpts of what he had to say:

*UNC announced after Brown’s presser concluded that next year’s game versus Old Dominion has been replaced by Connecticut, and since Brown doesn’t want to play FCS teams in November, the UConn game will be played Nov. 7 and a game previously slated for the weekend before Thanksgiving versus FCS member James Madison has been moved to Sept. 19.

Carolina hosted FCS member Mercer this past weekend, winning 56-7 in a game that was 42-0 at halftime. Rain and cold temperatures kept most fans away even though the game was sold out. Here’s what Brown had to say about that and playing FCS teams in November:

“I was pleased that it was a sellout. We’re only one of eight teams that had a sell out. I was disappointed not more people came. Our fans need to do better than that. Rain day, Mercer, if we play an FCS game we’re going to move it up to the front of the season so it won’t be at the end. But we could have done better with our fanbase this (past) weekend.”

*As noted, at 5-6 the Tar Heels need to win Saturday to qualify for a bowl, which some observers didn’t think would happen in Brown’s first season considering where the program was the last couple of years. So what does it mean to Brown to have the team so close to reaching one of its most important goals?

“It’s a good feeling,” Brown said. “It’s funny, it’s been such an up and down year (that) it’s a great feeling that we’re in this position to go to a bowl, it’s also a bit disappointing that we’ve had so many opportunities against Virginia Tech, who will play for the Coastal (Division title) against Virginia this week. Against Virginia, against Pittsburgh, we’ve had those opportunities.

“And the next step of our program I thought was to play to a standard last weekend and we did that, because I wasn’t sure we would. We might go out there and stand around… And now the next step is that we have to win these games that are close. We’ve won some but we’ve lost more than we’ve won, and that’s disappointing. But we really need to finish well and I think the guys, just watching them practice yesterday afternoon, I think they’re ready for this challenge.”

*Brown said the most important thing when he took over was that he thought the players and the fan base needed to believe again.

“The players, they didn’t believe they could win, and when you get that there’s a lot of negativity, there’s a lot of selfishness, it becomes about you when it’s not about team, there becomes a lack of discipline when they don’t think they’re going to win…

“So it’s a process of pulling everything back together and then to make it work you have to win. And we’ve won enough the players have bought in now and they understand what it takes to win, and that gives us a better chance this weekend.”

*Some N.C. State players nicknamed Kenan Stadium “Carter-Finley North” after winning at UNC for a second consecutive time. So can Brown use that as a form of motivation for his team or does he let the seniors handle it?

“You know, I’ve never heard that before until right now, that’s a first,” Brown replied. “I think what you do is show your rivals respect… You can have cute things to say, the school over there – you know Roy (Williams) calls them ‘State College’ because he’s beaten them so much. We haven’t beaten them, it’s hard for me to do any of that but have respect because they’ve beaten us.

“What I’ve always felt is that these are fun games, that if you have to motivate your team to play we probably have some problems. And you’ve got to be really careful, I’m more worried about our players being so excited about the game they play the game on Tuesday or Wednesday, and that’s what you have to be careful of for these games.

“Don’t have a great practice Tuesday, great practice Wednesday and then your week’s over and they’re down and tired by game time… I think these games can definitely be over hyped. You have to be careful, you are who you are, we’re not going to play better than we can, what we need to do is play as good as we can.”

Note: The Tar Heels will practice Wednesday morning and then the players that can get home for Thanksgiving will be off until Friday’s practice.

*Jacob Turner contributed to this report.