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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – At the ACC’s annual preseason football gathering, the University of Virginia’s three representatives – head coach Bronco Mendenhall, linebacker Chris Peace and wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus – made headlines this week with their comments about the emphasis UVA is placing on the annual game against Virginia Tech.
 
This is not, however, a new priority for the Cavaliers. At the end of every workout and every practice this year, UVA players have huddled and then broken by shouting the same refrain:
 
“Beat Tech!”
 
As both programs know well, seemingly an eternity has passed since UVA has done so. On Nov. 29, 2003, when Al Groh was their head coach, the Cavaliers rallied to defeat the Hokies 35-21 at Scott Stadium. Since then, Tech has won 14 straight games in this series.
 
Several of those games have been close – Tech won 16-6 in 2013, 24-20 in ’14, 23-20 in ’15, and 10-0 last year – but that’s small consolation to the Wahoos. They’ve progressed under Mendenhall, who took over as head coach in December 2015. Still, more hurdles must be cleared for the program to return to prominence, and reclaiming the Commonwealth Cup would be a signature moment in the building process.
 
“That game is of disproportionate value for the University of Virginia at this time, at this stage of the program,” Mendenhall said in May.
 
That’s been made clear to UVA’s players, coaches and staffers. Almost everywhere they turn on the lower two floors of the McCue Center they see graphics bearing two words: Beat Tech.
 
“It’s just to be conscious of it when you’re going in to work,” Zaccheaus said Wednesday at the ACC Football Kickoff. “Everything you do, you have to beat Tech … Just being conscious of it year-round will be big for us.”
 
The message is on computer screensavers, in the locker room, in Mendenhall’s office. There’s even a countdown clock the players see when they enter their meeting rooms.
 
“Part of cultural change is visual management,” said Mendenhall, who came to UVA from Brigham Young University, which has a bitter rival in the University of Utah.
 
“Things are real not only when they’re said, but they’re posted and there’s action. There’s a genesis for all of that. I’m not saying other coaches haven’t tried, but the reality is our program needs to play well in that game. And that will generate significant momentum.” 
 
Virginia Tech holds a 56-37-5 lead in a series that began in 1895. The Hokies’ 14-game winning streak is the longest either school has had against the other in football.
 
The Cavaliers’ next opportunity to end their skid comes Friday, Nov. 23, when they meet the Hokies at Lane Stadium. UVA hasn’t won in Blacksburg since 1998.
 
Zaccheaus attended high school in Philadelphia, so he knew little about the rivalry before he enrolled at UVA in 2015.
 
Peace, though, is from the state’s Tidewater region. He was well aware of the annual battle for the Commonwealth Cup as a high school standout in Newport News, and some residents like to remind him about the Hokies’ dominance in the series when he’s back home.
 
“They’ll say, ‘It’s been a while since y’all have won, huh?’ Stuff like that,” Peace said. “It’s definitely not fun, but it just adds more fuel to the fire.”
 
For inspiration, the Cavaliers can look north to West Point, N.Y., home of the U.S. Military Academy. Army lost 14 consecutive games to Navy before ending that streak in 2016. The Black Knights defeated the Midshipmen again last season.
 
When he arrived in Charlottesville, Mendenhall recalled Wednesday, he knew “some about the history [of the UVA program], some about the expectations, and some about the rivalry. But now that I’ve been at UVA for two years, it’s becoming clearer what has to happen for the program to advance, and there will be benchmarks along the way. If certain benchmarks are met, momentum will be added, which means the acceleration of the program will happen at a faster rate and maybe at a more meaningful level.

“Certainly when you have a rivalry game that you haven’t won in a significant amount of time, that’s one of the things that has to happen, regardless of where you are. So we’re open about it more so now that I’ve ever been, just because it’s clear that has to happen for the University of Virginia’s football program. And I want that to happen for our players. It’s not a secret. We are focusing on that as we need to, as well as the expectation [that] we expect to play postseason every year, not just occasionally, and we expect to win.”
 
In 2016, Mendenhall’s first season at UVA, his team finished with a 2-10 record. The ‘Hoos improved to 6-7 last season and advanced to a bowl game for the first time since 2011.
 
The players were determined to set a “new standard” for the program, and that phrase became a rallying cry for the Cavaliers last year. But they dropped six of their final seven games in 2017, a year that ended for them with a 49-7 loss to Navy at the Military Bowl in Annapolis, Md.
 
“Part of the new standard [this year is knowing] we have to beat Virginia Tech to make that next jump forward in our program,” Peace said Wednesday, “along with returning to postseason play and winning, as well.”
 
The low point of Mendenhall’s first season in the ACC came on Nov. 26, 2016, when the Hokies humbled the ‘Hoos 52-10 at Lane Stadium. Last year’s game between the longtime rivals was more competitive, though Virginia totaled only 191 yards on offense. That marked the first time the Cavaliers had been shut out in a game since their 38-0 loss to the Hokies in 2011.
 
Asked Wednesday if the gap between the programs had closed, Mendenhall said he wasn’t sure.
 
“Just in the two years that I’ve been the coach, the score of the two games reflects that, but we have significant work to do,” Mendenhall said.
 
The Hokies have a long tradition of success in football, Mendenhall noted, adding that they’ve “done a nice job supporting and building a strong program and a consistent program, so we’re clear about what that looks like. Now our complete focus has to be on us.
 
“Last year’s game reflects a competitive game, one that they still won. I’m sure there’s work to be done before that win happens. The sooner, the better. But I believe it’s time for our program to know that that has to be a focus, and a disproportionate focus for the sake of our program and its development.”
 
For UVA, in-state recruiting has proven to be considerably more challenging than Mendenhall expected when he took over the program from Mike London, who was 0-6 against Virginia Tech. That stems in large part, Mendenhall believes, from the Cavaliers’ struggles against the Hokies.
 
“Matter-of-factly, winning the Virginia Tech game will have more influence on in-state recruiting than anything else,” Mendenhall said in May. “The last time the kids that we’re recruiting now saw Virginia beat Virginia Tech, they were 4 years old. That’s their families as well, that’s the high school coaches.

“The hardest players to get currently for the University of Virginia are from the state of Virginia. I’m talking of the quality that we really want … It’s taking about one-fifth the amount of time and energy to bring players from out of state as opposed to in-state.”

That’s not a winning formula for the Cavaliers, Mendenhall knows, and so his program heads into the new season with an overriding objective, one that’s being ingrained in his players: Beat Tech.