Mack Brown discusses playing in close games, 'road warrior' mentality

North Carolina is 6-1 and unblemished in ACC play so far this season. But the journey to such a strong start was rarely easy. The Tar Heels have four wins by one score this season and just eked out a win over rival Duke in Durham. It’s not a perfect squad, but it’s a battle-tested one with a knack for finding themselves on the winning side.

Also, all four of those one-score wins came in road games. Which has Carolina fans calling this team the Road Warriors. After the game vs. the Blue Devils, UNC head coach Mack Brown was asked about the moniker after all these close road victories. Here was his answer:

“Yeah I think they were yelling that instead of me. But we’ve talked about that last year. Because we were trying to get it to sink in. And so, that’s what they want to be. And again, it’s college football. There’s so much parity that it comes down to a lot of close games.

“To have a good year you’ve got to win close games. And last year we didn’t, and this year’s team is, to this point. And that’s the difference and that’s why I’m so proud of them. They never gave up, they never quit. They had chances about every game to finish it. We’re not very good at finishing it. But we’re good at winning the game at the end and we’ll just we’ll grow up. We can really learn a lot from tonight.”

Mack Brown also commented on finally being able to win night games on the road.

“We’ve beaten Duke three times in a row. But they said I’ve lost all these night games on the road. So you can make the numbers do anything you want. And some of those games were really hard games. That’s why I’m so proud of these guys. Every team has a different personality in college football. And we’ve worked so hard to score touchdowns in the red zone. We’ve worked so hard to do a better job on third downs. We’ve worked so hard to limit some of the sacks, we’ve worked so hard to try to work to stop the run better and make some plays in the secondary.

“We’re starting to see all that comes to fruition. Our kicking game, I thought, was good tonight. So I’m really proud of these coaches and these kids. We’re really young. We’re really inexperienced. We got a freshman quarterback that hadn’t played very often. So, really really proud of these guys.”