CHAPEL HILL – Mack Brown’s weekly press conference Monday reached the 35-minute mark before he finished, and it wasn’t because he was longwinded, there were plenty of things for the North Carolina coach to hit on, so he did.

He noted many of the mistakes that led to the Tar Heels losing 43-41 at Virginia Tech in six overtimes this past weekend, plus addressed other elements of his team, an idea about challenging calls officials make, the direction of the program and so much more.

Below are some excerpts from what Brown had to say. In addition, the tail end of his presser is posted at the bottom of this report. THI’s camera automatically flips to a new file after 33-plus minutes, so since Brown went 35 minutes, a second file started. It’s posted below.

*Noah Ruggles missed two field goals in overtime Saturday, one of which was blocked, so Jonathan Kim has replaced him as the new kicker, Brown announced. Kim replaced Michael Rubino on kickoffs during the game in Blacksburg and will hold on to that duty as well. Rubino’s first kick was returned but all five of Kim’s were touchbacks.

“They’ll still compete but he will be doing that. And Jonathan will also take over the field goal duties. We’re 10 of 16 on field goals, three of those being blocked, (and) we’ve got to do a better job when we get down to that last-second kick. We gotta make it.”

*Carolina attempted a fake punt late in the third quarter while owning a 24-21 lead. The Heels were near midfield and the Hokies had inserted their third-team QB in the previous series. Some people thought kicking the ball made sense at that time, but Brown explained why the staff opted to go for it.

“We just took a shot deep on third-and-1 with our tight end, had a chance there for a big play. I thought it was a great call by Phil Longo, so we’re going to be aggressive. We’re so thin on defense right now we have to outscore people, so we’re going to go for fourth-and-1. So our thought was either go for it or line up for the punt, and if it was there take it. It was there, it’s exactly what we wanted (but) we didn’t execute it.”

*He noted the struggles running the ball in the second half. The Heels ran 17 times for 116 yards before halftime, but they had minus-one yard in 13 attempts through the third and fourth quarters.

“We didn’t run the ball well in the second half and we also didn’t protect well. We had some issues up inside with our guards and center, so that was disappointing.”

*Regarding UNC’s misses on both two-point play attempts in the fifth and sixth overtimes, Brown said: “Two-point plays, there’s always a lot of discussion, we’re 3-of-6 for the year. The national average is in the low 40s, we had a 41-percent chance of making it on Saturday because analytics gives you what your chances are against the team you’re playing each week, whether they’re right or not, but we’ve still got to improve in those areas.”

*Brown has clearly heard some of the criticism about clock management in this game, which he addressed:

“There were some question marks with time management right before the end of the half. They had an inexperienced quarterback in the game with a bad leg. So, we did not want to give him more time, we wanted to press him. And I thought, by calling timeout to try to save some for us, we were allowing them with him with a sore leg to do a better job of organizing how to score. So, that’s we held those timeouts in our pocket…

“Time management at the end of the game, I’m always gonna hold the timeouts in my pocket if I can. They were fourth down and one and a half with a running quarterback that we hadn’t stopped. There was probably a minute something left in the game, they were lining up to go for it, we didn’t know if they were going to try to pull us off, they were gonna go for it. I didn’t want to stop the clock and give him a minute left if he makes the first down, go down and kick the field goal and win the game.

“But, with our timeouts in our pocket - we had three - and 38 seconds from 75 yards away is plenty of time to get down and get a field goal because you have your whole playbook. You can throw the ball across the middle and call a timeout. In college football, 38 seconds is longer than you think because you make a first down, the clock stops unlike the NFL, you get out of bounds. Phil (Longo) was conservative at that point and he checked with me and had a pass call that was a quarterback draw if the quarterback didn’t like the pass so that’s why Sam (Howell) ended up running the ball.

“But, you want to save all your timeouts, you’ve got to have one left now because of the 10-second runoff. That changed coaching for sure, you can’t be without a timeout in your pocket because 10-second runoff can lose the game for you. But, you never want to have 10 on the field, nearly a delay of game, I didn’t think the field goal was going to be a delay of game, that was in overtime or I would have taken our timeout there. You don’t want to waste your timeouts so, for those who are wanting to coach time management, I think we won more games in the fourth quarter within three points than anybody in the country at Texas.

“What we’re doing works it just didn’t work well on Saturday but it had nothing to do with time management. The time management we had against South Carolina was very poor and that was awful and embarrassing and we fixed that, so that's not going to happen again.”