What Neal Brown Said Following the Win Over UNC

The West Virginia Mountaineers (9-4) defeated the North Carolina Tarheels (8-5) Wednesday night in the Duke's Mayo Bowl 30-10.

Opening statement

First of all, thank you. Thank you all for being here. Both our media from home and local Charlotte media. We've had a great week. So appreciate the Duke’s Mayo. Appreciate everyone associated with the bowl. It's been a great experience for not only our players but our staff and their families. So, that's much appreciated.

West Virginia showed up, you know, I thought we had a great crowd. They were into it the music selection was right on point for our people, and so, they had a good time with that. And then, they all stayed. So glad the national TV audience got to see how Mountaineer nation really supports our team and they love football… It's important to them and I'm glad they were able to experience a Bowl win too. And I'm sure we’ll sell some beer tonight in Charlotte so everybody will be winning on that.

I think one of the things that's special about college football is you have an opportunity to win your last game and these bowl games, I think they're meaningful. They draw a ton of people to watch on TV. They’re a good celebration at the end of the year, it's good reward, and they mean something. This means something to those 12 guys who played their last game for us, and this is going to be a catapult for us. I really feel like we should end the season in the top 25, I think we've learned that right. I've got to vote and I'll vote us in. And then I think once we go into the 24 season, I think we're a team that'll be preseason in the top 25 - we return a lot and I'm excited about that but the feeling in the locker room and you're able to hoist the trophy and be able to win your last game that's meaningful, and we're very appreciative of that.

This was this was not our typical game, but we found a way to win. This isn't the way we've won all year. We really won all year running the football, being heavy time of possession, minimizing the other teams plays and that isn’t how we won today.

Defensively, first of all, I thought we played extremely physical which is hard to do in a bowl game, but I thought our guys played really physical. We had seven sacks ,11 TFLs, four quarterback hurries, two interceptions. And so just fired up for our guys defensively.

Special teams made a huge difference. Fake field goal, punt return for a touchdown. Really swung the field a couple of times with our punt unit and we got guys down on kickoff. So, won the special teams battle soundly.

Offensively, not our best. Penalties, uncharacteristic. Disappointed we didn't take advantage of turnovers, that's something we really pride ourselves on this year, we didn't do that today but in the end, we found a way. Garrett Greene’s gritty… Then our young receivers made some plays.

Going deep on the first play of the game

We've done that a good bid throwing the ball down on the first play. Some of them you hit sometimes, you got to check it down but we like that. We tried to come back to it again. Garrett missed Traylon – Traylon could have held up that trophy if we would have thrown the ball a little better to him. You know, ran the ball for 5.8 yards. We had 164 yards. I don't know how many games in a row we ran for 140 plus. And so, I think it speaks well to us because the expectations now are that we need to be dominant up front. And really what I thought it was is we were rusty. I thought that Jahiem was finally Jahiem on that last run for the touchdown. He really stuck his foot in the ground and got vertical. He's been kind of slowed by a groin [injury], so he didn’t get to practice as much this week as it normally would. We missed CJ (Donaldson) - he's kind of our grind it out guy. We missed him and then Zach (Frazier). I really feel like Zach's the best center in the country. Really disappointed he went out for the Remington [Award]. I’d put his film against anybody’s but we missed him. You don't take that caliber player out of the lineup and not going to miss him, but I still think that that our guys did a pretty good job almost running for six yards a carry is a pretty good day.

Team + Individual Stats vs. North Carolina

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