The streak is officially over…

Hey, Sparemore holding it down for Adam Gold. He'll be back next week. I think he's still doing Cain's broadcast. Oh, yeah.

We're encouraging him to take a few days off. V to the Ictoria, producer. Is it V to the Ictoria or V to the Victoria?

V to the Ictoria. It's an old name. There we go. The dream is dead.

With all due respect to David Shoemade on the call there for Duke. They got the job done last night. But the dream, much like a white Christmas, the dream is over. And then much like a white Christmas, we saw the path to this happening.

The elements seemed to be forming in the right way. There was every reason to have hope that we might have an undefeated bowl season for the teams of North Carolina. But alas, much like snow on Christmas, and don't talk to me about any sleet or small accumulation. It did not snow. Snow in the clouds. Frozen ground does not equal white Christmas.

Yes, no snow in the clouds. Does not count. The dream is dead. When North Carolina lost in the Holiday Bowl. I am Hayes Permar.

That's Victoria. We've still got more bowl games to go and we'll still have fun with the Dukes Mayo Bowl and the, you know, actual good bowl games that start to happen closer and around to New Year's. We've got some good matchups coming up, including some involving ACC teams. But with North Carolina falling 28-27 last night to Oregon, the dream of an undefeated bowl season has, alas, fallen apart. Especially because I'm here this week and all these teams are playing.

I was in here. Wake played last Friday and Central played before that. But we were going to get to experience all the wins in real time. Because even the, the Mayo Bowl is Friday and you'd say, yeah, but you won't be able to talk about that because you're not on radio Saturday next Monday. But it's at noon. Yeah. It's happening now.

There's a decent chance. Not many college games seem to wrap in three hours these days. Football games go longer and longer. But we would have at least been able to see the direction of the game as it was happening.

We were going to be able to experience it all. Instead, we lost it. Dang it.

Thud. That's what happened. But we got good games to talk about too, so let's go ahead and jump out of the gate.

That's right. It's North Carolina Bowl Week. Across America, tis the season to celebrate college football.

From city to city, the passion is unrivaled. Coast to coast and beyond, the nation comes alive for Capital One Bowl Week. I didn't do the math this year.

I've done it in the past. But like, they're not that many states that have five or six FBS playing football teams, right? Obviously like Texas, Florida, California, the teams you think of that have them, right? But like, I don't know if New York is obviously a hugely populated state, but I don't think it has, it's got Syracuse and I don't know who else, Buffalo maybe, Division One, FBS, whatever.

So it is kind of cool. At times, we're thought of as a basketball state. We don't produce a lot of national champions in our state, you know, ever. And rarely are we competing in just the top, top tier. But it's not uncommon for us to get like four or five bowl wins because AP or ECU or sometimes both are usually bringing in some good play at the middle level. And in recent years, whereas Duke, State, UNC and Wake, none of them have been great. We've seen plenty of times where like three of the four are good at the same time. And right now, four of the four, going to bowl games, every reason to celebrate.

And it's like in 1987 or 1995, there's many times where it's like two or three of them are way down and one's doing okay with like eight or nine wins. Four North Carolina teams all going to bowl games, all in theory telling themselves, well, we don't have division crowns anymore. Like Duke and UNC would be telling themselves they could compete for the division next year.

It's going to be a little bit different. But every reason for all four of them to think that they're in the top third of the ACC, right? It might not shake out that way for all of them, but they feel like that all four of them feel like they have good head coaching situations, right?

Maybe not the best head coach you've ever had or ever seen or exist in America, but good solid head coaching positions at all four. So it was NC Central getting it done, 41 over Jackson State, 34. It was Wake, 27 over an SEC team, 17. It does not matter which SEC team it was. It was the SEC team. It was ECU over Coastal, 53 to 29. We were 3-0. And then we kept it going in the military bowl. Duke, 30.

Central Florida, 13. And can I say it? It wasn't that close.

No. Duke's defense was absolutely incredible, absolutely smothering. Cam Dillon, nine tackles and two sacks.

He was all over the place. I think he had one sack all year, came out with two sacks. Riley Leonard got the job done, 173 yards passing, another 63 rushing.

You heard the rushing touchdown coming in there. Some stats. Duke was 5-18, 1-17 in the ACC the past two years. This year they went 9-4 with a 5-3 mark in ACC play. Just the third season in school history where Duke finished with a winning conference record and won a bowl game. And their three ACC losses were by a combined eight points. They were not that far away from winning the Coastal Division and going to the AC Championship in Mike Elko's first year.

It's absolutely incredible what they did. Central Florida got a touchdown late. Not that Duke wasn't trying, but it was kind of a busted play that they got a long run on and then they punched it in.

Whatever. And then they tried the gadget play too much and Duke stuffed him on the two-point conversion to make sure that there was no chance it was going to be a win. And then Duke added another score. Duke's offense was perfectly fine and did their job. Duke's defense was amazing and stymied Central Florida in everything they tried to do. Congrats to them on the win.

Coach Mike Elko talked about it after the game. This is the end of a really amazing journey for this group. Just so proud of them. I told them all week that this story should end with them being the Military Bowl champions this year. They went out and they did it. They made enough plays today.

They were able to get it done and I couldn't be more proud of this group of kids. I can't remember that they lost by like three to UNC, I think two to Georgia Tech and I can't remember who their other loss was too off the top of my head. I should know these things.

Adam Gold would know these things. That's what you get when you get backup guy in here. But yeah, just know that they were 5-3 and they didn't lose any games where they got completely blown out or outclassed. It would have been nice to see them beat. Kansas was one of their losses and I think they were winning that game at one point. It was a good game. So just an unbelievable football season for Mike Elko. Yes, Chip Patterson told us yesterday they had some schedule breaks but basically playing in the Coastal works out well. But there's no reason to believe again they were competitive in all their games that they wouldn't have had a good season. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten to nine wins. But this is a good team and now Mike Elko is going to start adding more of his players.

With the transfer portal a lot of times you can do that even faster. Although, nobody's leaving. Everyone's coming back for Duke.

So we'll see. Will our friend Josh Graham over there in the triad go three years in a row of picking the Coastal winner correct? Will he go out and pick Duke? Just because it'll be a great talking point. If he does, he would never do that.

He would never do that. But yes, Duke with the win 30-13 over Central Florida. And then, a few hours later, it was the Holiday Bowl.

And things were looking really good. There was some weird stuff that happened earlier in the game. So missed field goals. A doink field goal for UNC. It's a reminder.

It's one of those things. I feel like we put too much pressure on college kickers. Because we put insane pressure on NFL kickers. If it's under 50 yards, we expect you to make it in the NFL.

Unless it's snowing or super windy then we may give you a pass. Under 50 yards, we want you to be 99%. Now it's like between 50 and 60 in the game on the line, you're not expected to make it. But the crowd's like, we think we can do this. And that's an insane thing to do.

Justin Tucker has ruined it for everyone. So then, if it's under 40 yards and you miss, you should be cut tomorrow. Those are the NFL expectations. But because we see it happen and we're like, come on, they're kickers. At the high college level, they should be pretty close to that.

And there's not a lot of Chris Dunn's out there. Isn't that the NC State kicker's name? I think I get it right. It's the backup guy here.

Remember, don't shoot me if I get it wrong. But when you have a reliable kicker who you feel like from 45 in is pretty darn good and might give you a chance at a 53 or 56 yarder, that is a really, really good thing to have in college. And you should hold on and cherish it. It makes life a lot easier. I think ECU would have had at least two more wins this year if they had gotten, again, not throwing the kicker under the bus. And I'm just saying, it should not be the expectation, but when you had that good kicker, things are better. UNC, there's a couple games this year that would have looked a little bit different if they had had a good kicker. But the defense got the job done for the most part. Mac Brown's got to go back and look at how he plays defense late in the game.

Because it happened to get to NC State. This one wasn't nearly as fast, but they were up 10 points with 9 minutes to go. And they immediately gave up one touchdown. It's one of those things that I can't tell you the X's and O's of where you need to be between prevent and all out blitzing in those situations. But you just can't let them get huge chunks of yards, take no time off the clock and score and then feel the pressure.

Especially when your defense has done a good job all day, including, shout out to Power Echols, with one of the better interceptions you'll ever see. A little bit lucky, he has grazed off somebody's calf, then hit his toe, and it's one of those things where kicking the ball to yourself apparently is illegal, so that would have negated the interception. So I, A, want to credit Echols, because I believe he did direct it with his toe a little bit towards his hands, and that is an incredibly skillful thing to do. Moving at high speed and the ball is just bouncing off somebody else. But B, I did not want him to get a penalty for that.

I was going to be extremely upset if they were like, nah, you can't do that, it's illegal. I don't know why, I feel like if the ball is in the air, and you can corral it by kicking it to yourself, I'm totally okay with that. Especially because if you're the offense and you try to kick it to yourself, you're bringing a bad bouncing risk, like keeping the ball in the air, I want crazy bounces. So A, I credit him for kicking the ball, and I'm very glad he didn't get called for kicking the ball because it would have been a way less cool play.

But that led to a great end of half for UNC, they seemed to be in control of the game, they did what they needed to do, and then the end happened. Also, one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, I don't know if you're watching the game Victoria, but they got called for failure to report. Now usually when that happens, it's like you can, I won't claim to know all the rules, but there's alignment rules of like who's lined up where, and it used to be more like what number you're wearing too. I think in college that still matters, certain numbers can be certain places, but if you tell the official, hey this guy's normally a lineman, he's checking in as an eligible receiver, so then everyone's aware that that guy might go up for a pass, even though normally that would be illegal, right? Now is this where that picture where the guy holding the jersey? This is a different situation because, and this is like Lane Kiffin who played yesterday, he has tried to use these rules to his advantage on having players change jerseys, but doing so in a legal way if you report in, so then the other team might be, it's just looking at a number and being like, well who's that guy? Well UNC, I think it was more of a like transfer portal, jersey on the road type thing, so they threw a jersey on a guy just to go receive a punt, and I think all he did was fair catch, if he didn't fair catch it, he didn't do anything significant. But whatever they did procedurally, they did it wrong, they did not check in officially, I don't think they were trying to be Lane Kiffin sneaky, I think they were just trying to get through the game with a lot of players that weren't on the team the whole year, so things changed a little bit, but it's one of those rare calls that you see, and then yes, it led to the great picture of dude on the sideline holding the jersey, and the cameraman is focused on him, and it's leading the crowd to like, I feel like, this is the guy who scored it once, right here, and I'm not sure, like I don't know, it might be another coach, it might be the coach that didn't tell the player what to say. Someone could have just handed him a jersey and was like give this to this person.

Dude on the sideline holding the jersey definitely was made to look like he was guilty for that. He's the next meme at least for the rest of the year. But yes, but that is what we love about bowl season, and actually we got some great bowl season magic in another game, but first, let's hear from Mack Brown on the game. Here was his opening statement after the loss to Oregon. We're ready to play tonight, played our hearts out, very disappointed that we didn't win, but we got to make a play here and there, and they're a great football team, and nobody gave us a chance in the game, and we had a chance with one second left, and that's all we could ask for in this situation, so proud of this team, winning 9, could have won 11, 12. Most of them are coming back, so it's great for next year.

I love these young guys. The saddest thing for me is that they played their hearts out, and they're one point away from being out there on the field and having a great time and feeling great about themselves. That's one of the very difficult things about sports, because there are actually two winners out there tonight because they played their guts out, and I'm really, really proud of the way they played, told them that. I said if we'd stop the fourth down play, I'd be happier for them that we won, happier for our fans, our administration that we won.

I wouldn't feel any different about them. They gave everything they had. Disappointed in the loss, but really, really proud. Thank the Holiday Bowl and proud of our guys. Coaches, players, everybody came out here to win, and they gave everything they had. Mac Brown's real good about turning losses into wins. There was one a few years ago where it was like, we didn't lose, we ran out of time. That was solid. And this one, he just went straight up, two winners.

You know what? We won two. I understand his point based on the way that you played the game. If a bounce had gone your way and you had won, you wouldn't have been more proud, because I do believe that about coaches. It's not the result, it's sort of the execution and the effort. If you do the execution and the effort, you know more times than not, you'll get the good result.

This time you didn't. And again, maybe a little examination of how we're playing defense. Especially because defense has been UNC's struggle all year.

It was a mostly positive. They did give up the big 60 yard run early, but they settled down after the first quarter and did a mostly good job. Drake May, we need you to score 28 points and we'd win the game. That would be okay, right? It looked like 24 or 14 might be enough.

27 points might be enough. It was not. I love how Mac Brown goes from one day talking about grabbing ankles, the QB's ankles, to Mr. Positive.

He's just trying to make light of it. Speaking of Drake May, there was discussion, we talked about this earlier, about kicking. If you do have that kicker that you believe in, maybe you attempt a 58 yarder.

Maybe. But they went with the Hail Mary. I think that was the right choice based on knowing their personnel.

I know this is dumb to say. Drake May is obviously a great quarterback. His Hail Mary didn't almost get caught, but Hail Marys are a little bit lucky anyway. But the way he threw that thing, it was a sharp Hail Mary. It went high and hung in the air. It was like that looks like an Aaron Rodgers Hail Mary.

Didn't get caught though. Here is Mac Brown talking about his quarterback. Drake is an absolutely amazing person. He's a better person than he is a quarterback. He's one of the best quarterbacks in the country. We had two of the best quarterbacks in the country tonight and they showed that.

They put on the show that everybody thought they would put on. Here's Drake without an offensive coordinator. I thought Lonnie Galloway did an outstanding job of putting an offense together. We've got to get offense.

We just need to tweak it some. But again, here's Drake. He had an analyst coaching him for the last month. He looked real good to me.

He did look good. It'll be fun watching him next season. Of course, completing North Carolina Bowl week will be tomorrow. The Dukes Mayo Bowl. Maryland vs NC State trying to get its 9th win of the season. Much like UNC and Duke. The series is tied 33-33-4. We'll talk to Anish Shroff later in the show about some Mayo Bowl and we'll talk Panther since he does that as well.

But I know nobody wants to hear this. The dream is dead of an undefeated bowl season, right? But the Heels were 13 and a half point underdogs.

So if you're betting on North Carolina Bowl teams, you're still undefeated, baby. There was two winners. Central was an underdog. They beat Jackson State. Wake was a small favorite. They won by 10, I believe. ECU, small favorite. Won by a bunch. Duke, small favorite. Won by 17. UNC, 13 and a half point underdog. Lost by one. North Carolina still paying, baby. So NC State, we'll check a lot on that one tomorrow.

The best bowl game of the day was the Liberty Bowl. Chip Patterson told us they did not have water there. There was some problem there. There's been a lot of places apparently in the South where our systems are not made to withstand the cold nearly as much. So a lot of pipes were bursting all over the place. Arkansas, 55. Kansas, 53. In triple overtime. And this one looked like it was going to be a blowout. It was 24-7, I think, after the first quarter. Kansas was down 18 in the fourth. Teams that were down 18 in the fourth quarter went 1 and 347 in college football this year, before this game. They got a score.

This was interesting. They were down 15. They scored a touchdown. And some people would say you go for two because you want to know what you need to do, right?

And most of the times I'm with whatever the math says. This time I was kind of with the coach of like, if you don't get it here and it's a nine point game, your team's going to feel deflated. If they're only down eight, they still feel like they're in it, right? Like the momentum still feels like it's really in their favor. So he took the extra point and then darn if they didn't execute the prettiest onside kick I've ever seen.

I mean, my man was just in the clear, scoop that. So we've got a score. You need four things to happen. You need a touchdown, a two point conversion, an onside kick, and another touchdown.

Like in some order. So they got the touchdown. They got the onside kick. Then they got the next touchdown, got the two point conversion. The Kansas quarterback threw for 544 yards. Now I know they played triple overtime, but you only start from like the 25 for two of them. And the third one is just a two point conversion. So it ain't like he was racking up that many yards in the extra period.

It was just an incredible game. And then came down to like a call that, I don't know, by the book might've been okay. The guy got hit, but basically a dude for Kansas was trying to get in the end zone.

And everybody's just like rushing to stop him. It's like any other like goal line scrum. So they're all just like diving into the guy that gets hits, who's going down, then helmets collide. They call it targeting.

I just did not see it. You're going to be like, feel very bad if Arkansas lost because of this. Instead, they held on. They get the two point conversion in the third overtime.

Kansas doesn't get it. And that was the end. In the late game, Texas Tech rolled over Ole Miss. I don't feel like talking about Lane Kiffin wanting to rest.

Maybe I'll bring that up later. But the only other thing I saw that was noteworthy besides the bowl games yesterday, last night, much like Luka Doncic the night before when he did his 60 point, 21, and 10 assists. The stats were cool. But the coolest part to me was this was a nip and tuck game and every single one of his points, rebounds, and assists was needed for the overtime win, right? Much was the case last night when Zion Williamson put up a career high 43, 14 to 21 for the field, 14 of 19 from free throw, 5 assists, 3 rebounds, and he was just bullying Rudy Gobert. Rudy Gobert is one defensive player of the year multiple times.

I'll let Brian Geissinger tell me who the best defender in the NBA is, but he's a pretty darn good one. Even if he's getting blocks from protecting the rim as opposed to one on one. But Zion was like, it wasn't even great offensive times. He was just dribbling, looking, and it was like, you know what he's going to do, but you're not going to stop him. And he was just bullying Rudy Gobert on the way to the basket. And displaying the one thing that he's known for, like quick hops, just jumping faster and higher than everybody else, and dunks, right?

And doing that. But the one that he doesn't get as much credit for, and that I was equally as impressed at this time at Duke, is like he's got, I don't know who the best, who he would say has the best touch. An Iverson-like, or other guys in the NBA, or like Manu Ginobili, touch around the glass. Sometimes it's spin, sometimes it's high off the glass to go around a defender, sometimes it's jumping high and hanging in the air, but then a little flip.

And he has got it, and it was all on display. And the dunks are like fun and would be more top ten worthy, but the, go look at the angles he uses off the glass, the spin he uses, the touch he uses for his finishes, it's not just all dunks. And it's impressive stuff, and it was super cool to see Zion, and including, much like we said about Luca, they needed every one of his points because he scored the last 14 points for the Pelicans in a one point win, 119-118, over the Timberwolves. He stole the ball, he had a sequence where he goes, like lay up on a drive, comes back down, steals the ball with 45 seconds left, dunks it to go up two, here's what it sounded like. And Zion takes it away.

Oh my goodness gracious. Joe, what do we see? We are seeing a superstar. Now, this led to, on the play, and here's how I saw it, there was definitely contact, there was a great no call. Because Zion got the ball and was stealing it and running the other way kind of before they collided, you know what I mean? It's not like he fouled the guy to get the ball from him. He got the ball, and then in the process of continuing his motion, they brushed, but at that point he already had the ball.

Yeah, one didn't cause the other. Yeah, so I thought it was a great no call, you want aggressive defensive plays like that, and it was just amazing. He is taking over the game, like score, steal, score, all this one dude, unbelievable.

But, he is very physical. At one point he may have caught, it's hard to tell if he caught him with his shoulder, I don't think he did anything intentional or like an arm, and after the game, DeAngelo Russell of the Timberwolves was complaining, I don't even know if this was a complaint or if it was a compliment. When I read it, I thought it was a compliment.

When you hear him say it, it sounds more like a complaint, I'll let you decide. Here's DeAngelo Russell. He's asking the question, it comes up in a second here, sorry. It's in the press conference.

Here it comes. Yeah, I mean, he just ran through my guy, took the ball. He's playing football, we playing basketball. We can't touch him or guard him, so good for him.

I think it was a complaint there. Again, there was contact, I'm sure there have been said, but that's how I would like basketball to be officiated. It's a sport where there's going to be contact. Again, I thought he stole the ball before they had contact.

When you read it, it sounds like a compliment. Zion was taking it to Rudy Gobert, and Brian Giesinger described him as a pick and roll unto himself, because a pick and roll is all about spacing and creating space between you and the defender, and Zion does that by himself. Not like pushing off, his body is large and he uses it well, and he's fast and jumps higher and quicker than other people, and it was just incredible to see last night, and he had a huge Zion scream after the big dunk. But this D'Angelo Russell quote is going to, I haven't been watching the talk shows this morning, they're probably talking more NFL or whatever, but this is going to be a theme about Zion, because he is that Shaq-like player, where there are plenty, I saw in the replies to D'Angelo Russell's quote, people with pictures of Zion going up and forehands grabbing him. He is in that Shaq mode of yes, his body is going to knock people over and it's going to be difficult to officiate him sometimes, and also, he's not going to get some fouls called against him when dudes are hanging on him, and he's going to get fouled a lot that gets called, and he's still not going to get called every time he gets fouled. Both are going to be true, he's going to play a physical game, but people need to get on the Pelicans train, I know it's not the easiest team to root for, because it's just weird and it's wonky and nobody likes the Pelicans, but they're cool and fun, and as has been noted on this show, many times they have a lot more North Carolina connections than just Zion. They've got Devontae Graham, the kid from Virginia, his name is escaping me, just a bunch of connections to the Pelicans, and Brandon Ingram from Kinston, so they're a fun team and it was fun to see Zion going off last night.