Mack Brown explains how he keeps bench from becoming chaotic

As North Carolina looks to improve on its 6-0 start, coach Mack Brown is exhausting all measures possible to get the most out of his team. Including motivational tactics for his bench players.

After all, there are a good number of players who are in the program who aren’t actively contributing on Saturdays. Why not involve them?

“I’ve challenged the young people that aren’t (playing), why are you on the bench?” Brown said. “Why are you on this team? What do you do? What do you bring? And you may bring cheering, because you’re not going to play. If that’s the case, man, cheer. You’re not on vacation. So many of them down there laughing and cutting up. No, you’re coming to win and bring energy to the crowd and bring energy to the other players. Get them water. Get them Gatorade. But why are you here?”

Brown is trying to keep the bench activated so that when his team runs into tough times he’s got some built-in motivation right there on the sidelines.

Part of that, though, is getting his coaching staff to sell that message. The head coach can only get so far before the position coaches really need to reinforce the message.

Brown wants the coaches’ messaging just right, too.

“And then with our coaches we said that the players read you like a book,” Brown said. “So if you show panic, they’re going to feel panic. It’s just like me. At bad times I’ll be more emotional because they’re going to look at me and see if I’m OK, because they think I have more knowledge than anybody else about what’s going on. So if I’ve got my head down… I used to (crouch down) a lot, do this. And that’s a bad message. I don’t do that anymore, because to me they look at me and they either say he’s tired or he’s frustrated or he’s down. I’ve got to go, man, I’ve got to pick it up. Sometimes you need to yell at an official to stir it up. You’ve just, you’ve got to stir them up.”

North Carolina has been in similar positions before early in the season, only to fade down the stretch. Quarterback Drake Maye and company are looking to avoid that this time around.

Maturity might just be the ticket, and Mack Brown sees a lot more of that on both his team and his staff these days.

“I love the fact that we’ve had great coaches,” Brown said. “This coaching staff is getting along better than any other. So instead of screaming at each other they’re saying what happened? What’s the problem? Let’s look at it. Then they’re sitting down with the players who are older and more mature and they’re talking about how to fix it. And that’s what we’ve said.

“They want to win. We want to win. So let’s don’t start yelling at each other on the sideline and, for instance, Ced Gray at Georgia State two years ago yelled at a player. Just berated him and now Ced’s going over and grabbing him and saying, ‘Come here, come here, this has got to get better and here’s what we’ve got to do. Pick it up.’ That’s where we’ve grown, I think, a lot with our leadership.”