The North Carolina football team has been selected to participate in the Military Bowl against Temple. The game will be played on Dec. 27 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md, with kickoff scheduled for noon.
This is the first bowl game for the Tar Heels since they competed against Stanford in the Sun Bowl in 2016.
“Our number one goal when we returned last year was to send the seniors out the right way,” head coach Mack Brown said in a statement released Sunday. “Everything we did, from spring practice to summer workouts to fall camp, was with an eye on winning enough games to get these seniors to a bowl game. Now, when this group looks back on their careers, they'll be able to say they helped get the program on the right track and finished with a bowl game. I'm just so happy for everyone involved in our program, but especially, that group of young men.”
Making a bowl game is a huge achievement for North Carolina after a combined 5-18 record in the previous two years.
UNC will be taking on a Temple team that went 8-4 overall and 5-3 in the American Athletic Conference. The Owls are led by AAC Defensive Player of the Year Quincy Roche.
“Now, we need to get our schedules together and figure out how we'll approach the next few weeks,” Brown said. “We'll let the guys focus on their academics as they move through finals and then we'll get some good work in with the extra practices. We'll work the young guys really hard and treat this as an extra spring practice, while making sure we get the team ready to take on a tough Temple team. I know the guys want to finish this season off with a victory, so I'm expecting everyone to be really focused for the next few weeks so we can be ready to play on Dec. 27.”
