CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If you tune into today’s Duke’s Mayo Bowl between West Virginia and North Carolina, you might not recognize the team in powder blue.
Between opt-outs, injuries and transfer portal entrants, North Carolina (8-4, 4-4 ACC) is going to look very different in game No. 13 than it did in game No. 1.
“We’ve got 12 starters from the first (game) of the year that won’t be in the game (Wednesday), so it’ll be a lot of new guys,” UNC coach Mack Brown said Thursday morning. “We absolutely don’t know what’s going to happen (Wednesday) with this team. Usually, you have some idea, but this one we have absolutely no idea.”
New starters for UNC include quarterback Conner Harrell, a center and several wide receivers. Brown isn’t even sure if the team will use a tight end because their top three options are all out with injuries.
“We’ve called it the ‘new opportunity bowl,’” Brown quipped. “We’ve told our guys we need to maximize these opportunities. It’s hard to get an opportunity to play and some of these guys have been wanting an opportunity to play.
“That’s one of the fun things for this team. There will be so many new guys to watch play, it’ll be exciting for them.”
Excited players are more or less all a coach can ask for in a bowl game anymore. With more and more veterans foregoing their teams’ bowl games, excited underclassmen have become a valuable asset.
“They’ve got several new guys playing and while they’re less experienced, they’re probably going to be more excited about playing in the game,” WVU (8-4, 6-3 Big 12) head coach Neal Brown said. “They’re going to have great energy, they just don’t have the experience. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad trade-off in a bowl game.”
In the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Mack Brown did not feel like his team was excited at all following two losses to end the regular season and the Tar Heels lost 38-21 to South Carolina in Charlotte.
“All of our practices have been good except for two years ago when we were down here,” Mack Brown said. “We didn’t play good against South Carolina. I didn’t think the guys were excited about being here. That’s the only bowl game we’ve been in where I didn’t think we prepared very well.”
With several players eyeing their first chance at significant playing time, Mack Brown said the leadup to this year’s Mayo Bowl has been very different.
“This one has been fun, the practices have been high-spirited,” he said. “They’ve worked really hard and I think they’ll be ready to play.”
