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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTE, N.C.– Since arriving in the Queen City on Christmas night, the Virginia football team has stayed busy, following an itinerary whose highlights have included a visit to (and race-car rides at) Charlotte Motor Speedway, a shopping spree at a local Belk department store, and a community service project at the Second Harvest Food Bank.
All of which has enhanced the Cavaliers’ postseason experience. Still, they haven’t lost sight of the main reason they’re here: to play in the Belk Bowl. And so they’ve practiced and prepared with a sense of purpose when not involved in bowl-related activities.
“Separate business from pleasure,” linebacker Chris Peace said. “That’s been the whole theme this week. I think we’ve done a good job of doing that.”
UVA’s coaches have stressed the importance, defensive lineman Eli Hanback said, of “being able to flip the switch, where you focus on the race-car stuff, the community service and all the stuff that goes along with going to a bowl game, and then an hour or two later you’re able to flip the switch and focus on football. I think we’ve done a good job with that.”
The test comes Saturday. At noon, Virginia (7-5) meets South Carolina (7-5) at Bank of America Stadium, home of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.
Asked Friday about his players’ mindset during bowl practices, UVA head coach Bronco Mendenhall said he’s seen “a motivated team that’s hungry and wants to win. They’ve been workmanlike and they’ve prepared, I think, very well for the game, with a no-nonsense approach.”
This is Mendenhall’s third season at Virginia. His second ended in Annapolis, Md., where the Wahoos made their first postseason appearance in six years. Apart from the opening kickoff, which Joe Reed returned for a touchdown, the Military Bowl was calamitous for the Cavaliers, who lost 49-7 to Navy.
“The whole experience of [preparing for a bowl game] was new to us,” said Hanback, a redshirt junior. “This year, having been to a bowl game before, we know when to enjoy the festivities of the bowl and when to get focused on football.”
Junior cornerback Bryce Hall and fifth-year senior running back Jordan Ellis echoed Hanback’s comments Friday.
“I think we just have a higher expectation of what we want to accomplish this year, so the urgency is heightened,” said Hall, an All-American. “I think we’re a lot more eager and hungry to execute.”
Ellis said: “There’s definitely more urgency. Last year everybody in the program was just kind of happy to get to postseason. I think this year we’re here to win the game. That’s something we’ve focused on since the Virginia Tech game, trying to move on from that. Once we learned we were playing in this game against South Carolina, we just turned all our attention to that.”
The ‘Hoos closed the regular season on Nov. 23, losing 34-31 in overtime to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. UVA, which had lost in overtime to Georgia Tech a week earlier in Atlanta, led the Hokies by a touchdown with two minutes left in the fourth quarter.
“It’s something I’ll always remember, and [the other Cavaliers] will always remember, because the way it ended was heartbreaking,” Hanback said of the loss at Lane Stadium.
“But I think it’s something we have put behind us, because we’re now focused on this game, and I think the great thing this game has been able to offer us is the opportunity to play again and not have to sit on that last game for a year … Now we have an opportunity to play another game and hopefully come out with a win.”
The UVA football family has happy memories of this city. In 2002 and ’03, the ‘Hoos defeated West Virginia and Pittsburgh, respectively, in what was then called the Continental Tire Bowl.
A third straight victory in Charlotte would secure the Cavaliers’ first eight-win season since 2011.
“Eight sounds a lot better than seven,” said Peace, a third-team All-ACC selection.
By the same token, eight sounds a lot better than five, or four, or two. That’s how many games Virginia won in 2014, ’15 and ’16, respectively. For the Cavaliers’ seniors, the hard times they endured as underclassmen have made them appreciate the program’s recent success more.
“Whatever you do, you want to leave something better than you found it,” said Ellis, the Cavaliers’ leading rusher this season. “Obviously I wanted to win a little bit more, but it’s definitely gratifying to get back to postseason [in consecutive years], something that hasn’t been done [at UVA] in a long time. I feel like this program is taking the necessary steps in order to reach where we ultimately want to be.”
All-ACC wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus, who holds the school record for career receptions (238), joined the program in 2015. Many of the other recruits who signed with UVA that year are, for various reasons, no longer in the program. That’s strengthened the bond among the seniors who stayed through the coaching change and embraced Mendenhall’s earned-not-given philosophy.
“Through the lows, you had to stay together,” Zaccheaus said. “We went through a lot of tough things, tough times, early on, and we stuck it out, and we saw the end result. That’s really what makes us close, the fact that we all stuck it out and we didn’t quit on each other or quit on the coaching staff.”
Ellis said: “There’s a bond with some of these teammates that will last a lifetime. We came into a program that wasn’t really expected to go to postseason, and now it’s kind of a normal thing for us. It’s definitely rewarding to get the program back to where it belongs. It’s definitely something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.”
Others who’ll be playing their final games as Cavaliers on Saturday include All-ACC safety Juan Thornhill, tight end Evan Butts, punter Lester Coleman, offensive lineman Jake Fieler, linebacker C.J. Stalker and long-snapper Joe Spaziani. (Two other seniors, offensive tackle Marcus Applefield and defensive lineman Dylan Thompson, came to UVA as graduate transfers this year.)
That he’ll be playing with the seniors for the last time Saturday, Hall said, “probably won’t really hit me until the clock hits zero. But this whole last week of practice, I’ve been trying to cherish these times and these moments that I have with them, because they have been really special to me, especially with my growth and my development as a player.”
Along with the coaching staff, Hanback said, the seniors have laid the foundation for a successful program. To send them out with a victory “would be an awesome thank-you to them,” Hanback said.
Mendenhall agreed.
“Without them, we aren’t building,” he said. “Without them, we aren’t growing. Without them, we aren’t back to postseason again … I like to see them happy. That’s my favorite thing, and I’d like to see that one more time.”
South Carolina, a member of the Southeastern Conference, presents a formidable challenge. The Gamecocks have an outstanding quarterback in junior Jake Bentley (27 touchdown passes) and come in averaging 440.2 yards per game.
“They go real fast, impressively fast,” Peace said. “We gotta be locked in and ready to go with them.”
What impresses him most about the Gamecocks offensively, Mendenhall said, is “their tempo and their skill. They’re talented, they’re fast, their tempo is fast, and their personnel is very good.”
Of the teams UVA faced during the regular season, Mendenhall said, NC State is probably the most similar to South Carolina in terms of personnel and scheme. The Wolfpack, led by quarterback Ryan Finley, defeated the Cavaliers 35-21 in Raleigh, N.C., in late September.
In that game, NC State totaled 257 yards in the air and 176 on the ground. The Gamecocks’ strength this season has been their passing attack, but they’re not one-dimensional.
“They obviously have a very effective passing game,” Hanback said, “but they also have a very good O-line and, from what we’ve seen, a very effective running game that complements their pass game. They do a good job of keeping teams honest.”
The UVA team that met Navy in the Military Bowl last year relied heavily on a passing game built around the strong arm of Kurt Benkert, who’s now on the Atlanta Falcons’ practice squad. With the addition of dual-threat quarterback Bryce Perkins, a junior who played at a junior college last fall, the Cavaliers have been more balanced – and more productive — this season.
Perkins, who’s thrown for 2,472 yards and 22 touchdowns, is also Virginia’s second-leading rusher, and he’s tied with Ellis for the team lead in rushing touchdowns (nine).
Conditions in Annapolis for the Military Bowl were brutal – it was 24 degrees at kickoff, with 13-mph winds – and that contributed to the Cavaliers’ woes against Navy. Benkert completed only 16 of 36 passes.
The Midshipmen, meanwhile, didn’t complete a pass, but they didn’t need to. They rushed for 452 yards.
The weather “affected us,” Mendenhall said, “as we were a conventional throwing team. It certainly affected us, and we weren’t resilient or mature enough or effective enough to handle that, in a lot of different ways. It was one more lesson to validate what we’re doing now offensively, why we’re doing it, and not to be at risk based on things we really can’t control, like the weather.”
Saturday in Charlotte is unlikely to remind anyone of that frigid December day in Annapolis. “That was the coldest game I ever played in,” Zaccheaus recalled.
The forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of about 65. That’s close to perfect football weather, and the Cavaliers are determined to make the most of the conditions.
A loss can yield valuable lessons, as was the case with last year’s Military Bowl, but victory is “just more fun,” Mendenhall said. “Once you win, there’s just a different level of self-assuredness, confidence, and the players look forward more to arriving each day because of the certainty of, ‘This work will equal this result.’ “
Not since 2005, when the Cavaliers defeated Minnesota in the Music City Bowl, have they ended a season with a win. To do so Saturday would be “gigantic,” Peace said.
“The last few years, it wasn’t a fun sight seeing the seniors leave with a loss, and I don’t want it to happen to us. I just want to go out and give it my all and leave with no regrets.”