CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina will close its 2024 season in Boston.

The Tar Heels will face UConn in the Wasabi Fenway Bowl on Dec. 28 at Fenway Park, sources tell Inside Carolina’s Taylor Vippolis. The game will air that day at 11 a.m. on ESPN. North Carolina also played in an MLB stadium in the 2022, when it lost to Oregon in the Holiday Bowl at Petco Park in San Diego.

UNC’s last bowl game win came in 2019, when it defeated Temple in the Military Bowl. This will be the program’s 39th all-time bowl appearance, and the team is 15-23 in its bowl games. North Carolina lost last year’s Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte to West Virginia.

This will be the third installment of the Fenway Bowl, which was first played in 2022 when Cincinnati and Louisville matched up. The Cardinals won that year, and Boston College defeated SMU in last year’s matchup. 

Jim L. Mora has coached at UConn since the 2020 season. He is 17-20 in his time with the Huskies and has now led the team to bowl game eligibility twice. UConn, which has competed independently since the 2020 season, and finished its regular season with an 8-4 record. The Huskies went 0-3 against ACC opponents this season with losses to Duke, Wake Forest and Syracuse.

UConn averaged 32.3 points per game as an offensive in the regular season and averaged 400.7 yards of offense in 12 outings. The team was led offensively by its run game, with three running backs who rushed for more than 500 yards. Cam Edwards led the team in yards with 756 yards and scored seven touchdowns in the regular season. Durrell Robinson was second on the team with 731 rushing yards and led the team with eight scores on the ground.

The Huskies played both Nick Evers and Joe Fagnano at quarterback, with Fagnano leading the way as of late. Fagnano has thrown for 1,480 yards with a 56.8% competition rate. Fagnano has thrown 18 touchdowns and four interceptions.

On defense, the Huskies allowed 23.8 points per game. Teams threw for an average of 223.8 yards per game and rushed for an average of 135.3 yards per game against UConn. Jayden McDonald leads the team with 119 tackles — including 3.5 of the teams 21 sacks — and Malik Dixon-Williams leads the team with three interceptions.

UNC finished the 2024 regular season with a 6-6 record, clinching bowl eligibility for the sixth season in a row. North Carolina went 3-5 in conference play.

UNC opened its season with a road victory on a Thursday night against Minnesota, and it won its next two games at home vs. Charlotte and North Carolina Central. But a 20-point upset loss to James Madison, in which the team tied a program record for points allowed with a 70-50 defeat, was the first of four straight losses for the Tar Heels. 

After that stretch, though, North Carolina went on to pick up three consecutive wins, defeating Virginia, Florida State and Wake Forest. The Tar Heels were throttled on the road by Boston College before playing their regular season finale against N.C. State, which it lost 35-30 in Mack Brown’s final game as UNC’s head coach.

Jacolby Criswell and Kaimon Rucker were asked after the loss to the Wolfpack about the team’s desire to play in a postseason bowl.

“I’d say the guys that are going to be here are going to be here, and they want to be a part of this,” Criswell said. “And we’re just going to go out there and win this ball game, and we’re going to win this ball game for Coach Brown. He’s not going to be out there with us, but he’s going to be on the field with us in our hearts.”

Added Rucker: “Shoot, we want to play. We got an opportunity to go to a bowl game. We got to finish the season right, especially after what happened tonight. We got to end out on a high. We can’t go out with just having this on our back.”

After North Carolina’s final regular season game against N.C. State, the team hired tight ends coach and run game coordinator Freddie Kitchens to be the interim head coach. Kitchens has been on staff since the 2023 season, and his collegiate coaching experience dates back to 1999. He also coached in the NFL for 11 seasons in a variety of roles, including his one year as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 2019.

Brown completed his time with the Tar Heels with a 113-79-1 record through 16 seasons, including a 44-33 record in his second run at North Carolina. UNC went 27-23 in ACC games in his second stint, and the team clinched bowl eligibility in each of the last six seasons. Brown coached the 2022 UNC team that reached the ACC Championship game and won the Coastal Division title. In his first stint with UNC, Brown coached the team to three 10-win seasons from 1988-97. The Tar Heels went 69-46-1 overall in that span. He won ACC Coach of the Year in 1996.