Dec. 5 (Saturday)
Western Carolina at North Carolina (ACC Network/
online), 12 p.m.
Notes:
• The Southern Conference wraps up its fall slate Saturday when Western Carolina visits North Carolina at noon on the ACC Network.
• Western Carolina and North Carolina have met twice before, with the Tar Heels taking a 65-10 win in 2017 and a 49-26 victory in 2018.
• UNC will be the seventh FBS opponent faced by SoCon teams this fall in just 11 games played. The Citadel took on three of them, including then-No. 1 Clemson, while Western Carolina booked two FBS squads. Chattanooga and Mercer faced one each.
• Two of Western Carolina’s three fall opponents have appeared in the national rankings this season. Liberty was ranked No. 22 when the squads met on Nov. 14, while North Carolina has been in and out of the rankings and has reached as high as No. 5 this fall. UNC fell out of the rankings this week after its loss to No. 2 Notre Dame on Friday, Nov. 27.
• In its last outing, Western Carolina dropped a 49-17 contest at Eastern Kentucky on Nov. 21 in the inaugural Opportunity Bowl. The game was dedicated to the late Dr. Sheila Davidson Pressley, a 1989 Western Carolina graduate and the former Dean of Health Sciences at EKU who also served as the Faculty Athletics Representative.
• The Catamount defense forced four turnovers against the Colonels, including a 54-yard scoop-and-score by Ricky Palao on a fumble recovery. Roman Johnson forced the fumble on a sack.
• Freshman kicker Paxton Robertson kicked a career-long 52-yard field goal early in the second quarter.
• Redshirt junior quarterback Will Jones earned the start, finishing the game 12-of-25 for 127 yards with a touchdown, a 30-yard scoring strike to Mahari Stribling in the fourth quarter.
• Senior running back Donnavan Spencer paced the Catamounts’ ground game with 56 rushing yards.
• Western Carolina’s Quintin Talley and A.J. Rogers had a game-high eight tackles each. Ronald Kent Jr. forced another fumble and Trevor Childers and Aaron Gethers had interceptions, with Gethers adding a fumble recovery.
• Then-No. 25 North Carolina dropped a 31-17 decision to second-ranked Notre Dame in its last outing to fall to 6-3 on the season. The teams were tied at the half before the Fighting Irish scored single touchdowns in the third and fourth quarters to pull away. UNC quarterback Sam Howell went 17-for-27 for 211 yards and a touchdown through the air, also adding a 1-yard TD run.
• North Carolina kicker Grayson Atkins spent the first three seasons of his career at Furman before transferring, earning All-America honors in 2018 and 2019. He was the first-team All-SoCon placekicker in both of those seasons, also earning second-team honors at punter as a junior in 2019. Atkins had a 42-yard field goal for the Tar Heels against Notre Dame.
• With Saturday’s game wrapping up the fall schedule for Southern Conference programs, the league will resume play in the spring, opening its championship season on Feb. 20. The nine squads will each play eight SoCon games over a nine-week span, concluding on April 17 with the FCS playoffs to follow.
Recent news:
SoCon Goes Pro: NFL Week 12 (11/30/20)
Commissioner’s Corner, Nov. 30 (11/30/20)
SoCon Goes Pro: NFL Week 11 (11/24/20)
Book celebrating SoCon's 100th anniversary on sale now (11/23/20)
EKU stops Western Carolina in Opportunity Bowl (11/21/20)
Southern Conference to celebrate 100 years in 2021 (11/19/20)