Mack Brown: 'You shouldn't be at North Carolina and lose to a Group of Five team'
North Carolina suffered the wildest loss of the weekend with a 70-50 defeat at home to James Madison. For that, Mack Brown is accepting all the blame because of it.
Brown opened his postgame press conference by taking the fault for the 20-point loss to the Dukes. Simply put, it was an indefensible outcome for their team which all comes back to him considering he’s the head coach.
“Embarrassing day, shocking day,” Brown stated. “You shouldn’t be at North Carolina and lose to a Group of Five team – period. There are no excuses.”
“It can only come back to one person and that’s me,” said Brown. “I’ve hired everybody on this staff, I hired everybody that works in this building, and I’ve signed every player on this team. So, I mean, the people that want to blame me? They should because I am at fault – 100%. I missed it.”
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For that, Brown expressed his remorse to their fanbase who came to see that or watched it at all yesterday.
“I felt bad for our fans and our students that came for them to have to look at something like that.”
However, Brown also didn’t want to take away from the job that James Madison did versus himself and the Tar Heels.
“Congratulations to JMU. I should’ve said that,” said Brown. “I think Bob (Chesney) is a really good coach and they did a great job coaching today. They did a better job than I did. That’s what it is.”
James Madison was already up 11 twice in the first quarter. That lead then extended to 32 for the Dukes by halftime after four unanswered touchdowns in the second quarter and after forcing four turnovers out of five on the day in the opening half. UNC cut into it in the second half with a 29-17 differential but it was not nearly enough to get back into it.
JMU put up an all-time outing against North Carolina. It was off from the very start too as Brown noted how all three phases of their team contributed to the loss.
“Our defense, who played great all spring, all preseason, and played outstanding for the first three games, looked awful today. We had communication problems, we had missed tackles. We had guys wide open for a touchdown,” Brown said. “Our special teams, who had been better than the three teams we had played the first three games? Had an onside kick that hit us in the chest and they get it for a score, had a blocked punt that they get for a score. Jacolby (Criswell), I thought, played really, really well. He even had an interception for a touchdown right before the half. Conner (Harrell) came in for one play and fumbled the ball and that ended up being a touchdown.”
“We had a great week’s practice. I thought we’d win the game. We had a bust on the first play of the game with a quarterback that runs 50 yards that somebody didn’t take the quarterback. Then we have a fumble on the first drive. It was just a day that started wrong,” continued Brown. “I really thought we’d turn it around at halftime and still win the game because we could’ve and we moved the ball at times well enough in the second half to win the game. But we still couldn’t stop them and we had to score every time we had it to have a chance to win the game.”
Taking responsibility like this further emphasized the reports about Brown after this game. He took it all on himself for what happened inside Kenan Stadium on Saturday.
“Again, there’s only place to put it and that is on me – 100%,” said Brown. “I’ve got big shoulders. I’m embarrassed for our whole program that we would put a product like that on the field. I feel really bad about that.”