129th Season of UVA Football Commences Saturday

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UVA opens 129th season of football
• The University of Virginia opens its 129th season of 
football Saturday against Richmond. 
• Richmond is receiving votes in the preseason FCS poll.
• It is the 88th season the Cavaliers have played in Scott Stadium. 
• UVA is 81-38-9 (.676) all-time in season openers.
• The Cavaliers are 75-21-7 (.767) in home season openers and have won 18 of their last 23 season openers in Scott Stadium.
• In his career as a head coach, Bronco Mendenhall is 9-4 in 13 season-openers. 

Virginia vs. Richmond, CAA
• Virginia owns a 28-3-2 edge in the all-time series with Richmond. UVA won 10 meetings in a row dating back to 1947, before falling 37-20 in the 2016 season-opening game to the Spiders.
• The Cavaliers own a 59-10-3 record against current members of the CAA.

Five Top Storylines
• The Cavaliers open their 129th season of football on Saturday night against the Richmond Spiders. It is UVA’s first night game to open a season since the Cavaliers hosted William & Mary to open the 2011 season.
• Virginia is opening its season against Richmond for the seventh time. UVA is 5-1 all-time when opening a campaign against the Spiders with wins coming in 1893, 1894, 1979, 2010 and 2012. All six of the previous season openers against Richmond were also played in Charlottesville.
• UVA is looking to win back-to-back season openers for the first time since winning four in a row from 2010-13. UVA beat William & Mary, 28-10, to open 2017.
• Bronco Mendenhall is facing an FCS team for the 11th time as a head coach. He is 9-1 all-time against FCS competition. Mendenhall has faced Eastern Illinois (1-0), Eastern Washington (1-0), Idaho State (2-0), Northern Iowa (1-0), Richmond (0-1), Savannah State (1-0), Wagner (1-0), Weber State (1-0) and William & Mary (1-0).
• Olamide Zaccheaus enters 2018 with 157 career receptions. He needs 54 catches to break Billy McMullen’s UVA record of 210. With 43 receptions, Zaccheaus will become only the second player in program history to reach 200 career receptions.

Richmond Coach Familiar with UVA
• There are various connections between UVA and Richmond, Commonwealth institutions located 70 miles apart. 
• One of Richmond’s coaches has a direct link with the Virginia program. 
• UR co-special teams coordinator/running backs coach Sparky Woods served as quarterbacks coach at Virginia from 1997-98, tutoring future NFL quarterback Aaron Brooks.

Tale of Two Brothers
• Virginia junior linebacker Jordan Mack is the younger brother of former Richmond defensive back, Charles Mack.
• The Mack brothers hail from Lithonia, Ga., and both played high school football at the Wesleyan School.
• Jordan Mack made his collegiate debut and first collegiate start against Richmond in the 2016 meeting, facing his older brother. In that game, Jordan Mack made three tackles, while Charles Mack made one.
• Their father, Charles Mack, played football at Georgia Tech from 1983-87. 
• Their cousin, Jimmy Coleman, played football at Tulane.

UVA Players from Richmond
• Virginia has 13 on its roster from Richmond and its surrounding areas: Cole Blackman (Glen Allen), Parker Chenault (Hanover), Evan Clark (Richmond), Malcolm Cook (Richmond),  Lee Dudley (Richmond, Va.), Eli Hanback (Ashland), Tim Harris (Richmond), Webster Hill VI (Richmond), Chris Jones (Petersburg), Reed Kellam (Richmond), Billy Kemp (Highland Springs), Mikey McDonald (Midlothian) and Hayden Mitchell (Richmond).

Throwback: Six Years to the Day
• Saturday is the six-year anniversary to when UVA opened the 2012 season with a 43-19 win over Richmond.
• Former UVA quarterback Michael Rocco threw for 311 yards and a touchdown to lead the Cavaliers.
• Rocco  finished 25-of-37 with a touchdown on a short pass that Darius Jennings took 51 yards for a score.
• Kevin Parks ran for two touchdowns and Perry Jones ran for another for UVA.
• The Cavaliers took a 16-0 lead in the  first 6:27, had to settle for two  eld goals in the second quarter and put the game away with touchdown runs by Parks in the third quarter and Jones early in the fourth.
• The Cavaliers out gained Richmond 523-201 in the  first three quarters, and much of the Spiders’ yards came after the game was well in Virginia’s control.
• Rocco later went on to graduate from Richmond after he transferred following the 2012 season. 

Bronco Mendenhall is in Special Company
• Bronco Mendenhall is one of three active coaches that has inherited at least two programs in his career that were coming off a losing season and in year one, or year two, played in a bowl game. The others to do it are Nick Saban (Alabama, LSU, Michigan State) and Mark Dantonio (Michigan State/Cincinnati).
• Mendenhall inherited a BYU team that went 5-6 in 2004 and in his first season the Cougars went 6-6 and played in the 2005 Las Vegas Bowl. Mendenhall took over a Virginia team that went 4-8 in 2015 and took the Cavaliers to the 2017 Military Bowl in year No. 2, finishing 6-7. 

Return of the Mack
• Junior inside linebacker Jordan Mack is UVA’s leading returning tackler after finishing 2017 with 114 tackles. 
• While former Cavaliers Micah Kiser (145) and Quin Blanding (137) finished No. 1 and No. 2 in the ACC in tackles three years in a row, Mack finishing No. 5 in the ACC and No. 28 nationally in tackles was mostly an after thought.  In 2017 UVA was the only “Power 5” to have three players with at least 100 tackles. New Mexico State was the only other school in the nation to also accomplish that feat in 2017.
• Mack returns the second-most tackles in ACC entering 2018, chasing only Duke’s Joe Giles-Harris (125), who finished No. 3 in the ACC in tackles in 2017.
• Mack is tied for No. 14 in the nation among all tacklers returning in 2018. 

Mendenhall Names Three Captains
• On Monday, Aug. 27, UVA head coach Bronco Mendenhall announced that TB Jordan Ellis, OLB Chris Peace and HB Olamide Zaccheaus were named captains, as voted on my their peers.