Mack Brown on UNC's Win Over Duke

Coach breaks down Tar Heel offense, defense

North Carolina had a dominant win over Duke to hold onto the Victory Bell for another year.

“I’m really pleased with our team,” Mack Brown said. “This is a very important game for UNC. It’s really important to keep the Victory Bell for our fans and families. I applaud our coaches and players for understanding how important this game is and playing so hard. Credit Duke. They got behind early and kept playing hard. David’s (Cutcliffe) guys aren’t going to quit. That’s just part of it.”

The Tar Heels scored on their first seven possessions.

“I’m really pleased with the offense,” he said. “We weren’t as good in the third quarter as we were in the first two. We had one interception that hurt us, but they were five-for-five when it mattered, in the red zone for touchdowns. We rushed for 338 yards in 47 attempts, and we made four fourth-down situations that were really important in the first half.”

After giving up 44 points against Virginia last week, the Tar Heels’ defense also improved.

“I thought we played much better,” Brown said. “We forced some turnovers. We stopped the run, other than some big runs—two or three runs, we simply can’t have—unacceptable. By and large, we played much better on defense, except for giving up big runs. The secondary without Kyler McMichael and Don Chapman played well. They hung in there.”

“Too many penalties, for sure,” he added. “We had two hands-to-the-face penalties, which we haven’t had. Then we had two roughing the quarterbacks. I didn’t see Tomon’s (Fox). The one on Ray (Vohasek) was a hit down around his knees, and that’s called roughing the quarterback now. It’s different than it used to be. Those are things we can correct. We had two really long third down situations that we allowed them to come back and make because of penalties.”

Because it was a blowout, UNC got to clear its bench in the second half.

“We got to play a lot of people,” he said. “Other than winning the game, that was probably the most important thing. A lot of the third quarter and all of the fourth quarter, we were playing a lot of people we haven’t played much. That should help us down the road.”