CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina is 2-0 with wins over a pair of Power 5 teams, but Mack Brown and his staff are still learning about their team.
Brown has a lot of questions that will be answered over time. Among them is the need for the Tar Heels to become a player-led team, not a coach-led club. The Hall of Fame coach hopes to see signs of that this week as the Heels head to Wake Forest for a Friday night kick in Winston-Salem.
Brown hit on a multitude of topics in Monday’s weekly press conference. Below are some notes and quotes from a few of the things he discussed:
*With a short week, the Tar Heels did not take their day off Monday, which was instead treated as a typical Tuesday during game week and Tuesday morning’s practice will be like a typical Wednesday, and so on.
“We didn’t go outside yesterday and practice…,” Brown said, alluding to Sunday, as most teams have a short practice the day after games. “But they were focused yesterday. When we win, we celebrate. We show them a highlight film and we have players of the week. If you lose, we don’t have anything, we have a hard discussion and go back to work.
“So they had fun yesterday and yesterday was a day of celebration to celebrate the Miami game and get it out of your system, had the victory meal last night and got them in bed early. Got them up early this morning and started our team meetings at 6:30 and we just had our two-hour practice and they were sharp and did a good job.”
Brown said they cut a little off of Monday’s practice and will do the same Tuesday to help keep them fresh for Friday night in Winston-Salem.
*Regarding the crowd for Saturday night’s win over Miami, Brown said: “It was the best atmosphere I’ve seen here ever. It was a better atmosphere than the 10 years that we were here before. I think even the Florida State game (in 1997) and it was a better game and more excitement. The crowd made a difference in this one. The crowd was loud throughout, they were very engaged. It was a fun night in Kenan Stadium.”
*Brown said Xach Gill was credited with blocking the first missed field goal by Miami. He got a hand on it deflecting the ball and altering its course.
*The staff spent nine months trying to instill confidence into a team that didn’t have much, a task that was quite difficult without the team playing a game until 10 days ago. Now, after starting out 2-0 with comeback wins the staff must guard against the players losing a bit of perspective and their focus on the next mission in front of them.
“We’ve talked to the guys that they need to enjoy and appreciate their first two wins, we don’t want to forget them and act like they never happened,” he said. “They’re real and they’re good and they’re things they should feel good about and should give us confidence going forward, but you also need to move forward. You can’t keep talking about those games, you’ve got to start talking about the Friday night game with Wake Forest. And I think they’re doing that.
“I really worried about it after the first game, but then after this week, it seems like their total focus is on trying to get to 3-0 and they understand the importance of that.”
*Injuries happen, and with Patrice Rene out for the season and Nick Polino out indefinitely, and it likely will be a while, the Tar Heels have lost two of their five or six most experienced players from a roster that didn’t have a lot of experience entering the season. And by looking at the snap counts through the first two games, the staff clearly recognizes it must build depth.
“We have got to have somebody ready to play when somebody gets hurt and we challenged the team on that this morning.?
*The game at Wake Forest this week is a nonconference game because with them rarely facing each other situated in different divisions in the expanded ACC, the schools decided to play each other in a home-and-home series that wouldn’t count as ACC games. It brings to mind the old state championship Brown promoted when he was at UNC the first time.
There was a reason Brown did that, as he explained Monday.
“When we were here 30 years ago, at first we were trying to beat anybody,” he said. “We had no wins; we had 20 losses and two wins. So, we were trying to figure out, what can we do to stir somebody up, stir the players up. And then we really felt like, and it’s been my philosophy my whole coaching career, is if you can’t win at home you can’t win on the road, if you can’t recruit at home you can’t recruit out of state.
“So, everything starts with your home state. People used to laugh at the state championship, but all of our boosters liked it when we won it, so now they’re asking me to get it back.”
