After the North Carolina football team’s historic six-overtime loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday, Mack Brown and his coordinators discussed the team’s mistakes, and how to address them, during their weekly Monday press conference.
One big change made to address those mistakes: a new starting kicker, first-year Jonathan Kim. He'll be replacing sophomore Noah Ruggles, who went 2-4 on field goal attempts on Saturday, one of which was knocked down by the Hokie defense.
“We’re 10-of-16 on field goals with three of those being blocked,” Brown said. “But still, we’ve got to do a better job. When we get down to that last-second kick, we’ve got to make it."
The end of the game was heartbreaking for Brown, even though he told his wife, Sally, that he wouldn’t hurt so bad after losses anymore. He broke that promise on Saturday.
"Saturday night was one of the toughest losses that I’ve ever been around," Brown said. "I went back and thought about it, and there’s probably three (tough losses), and this one is as tough as any of them because we had opportunities to win it with one play four or five times, and when you do that, you’ve got to finish them.”
Whether it was the spoiled drive at the end of regulation, the missed field goal in triple overtime or an inability to stop Virginia Tech on fourth-and-three in the second overtime, UNC just couldn’t get it done.
Brown undoubtedly would’ve wanted a lot of things during the six overtimes to go differently. Prior to the botched field goal attempt, UNC was called for a questionable holding call that made the kick much more difficult.
“When we got the holding call, it puts us in a position where now we're trying to get yards to get back to a better field goal,” Brown said. “So that was a killer.”
Still, UNC had plenty of other opportunities to escape with a win. Started in the fifth overtime, the two teams had to trade off two-point conversion attempts, shootout style, until a winner was decided. The Tar Heels failed to convert on both of their chances.