By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Upon further review, his football team’s performance in its second game looked no better to University of Virginia’s first-year head coach than it had in real time. UVA gained only 222 yards and lost 24-3 at Illinois on Saturday.
“What was more evident when I watched the tape [was that the] guys didn’t respond well to the adversity,” Tony Elliott said Tuesday during his weekly press conference at John Paul Jones Arena.
“I felt like especially on the offensive side of the ball, just being transparent, Illinois punched us in the mouth, and the guys were reeling the entire game. You were hoping that somebody was going to step in and say, ‘Hey, fellas, follow me, I’ll find us a way out of this situation,’ but when you watch it on tape, I was trying to find some positives, but there wasn’t a ton of positive.”
The Cavaliers’ defense produced all of the highlights, forcing four turnovers and keeping the Fighting Illini from blowing the game open early.
“A lot of encouragement from what I saw defensively, confirmation that the guys competed until the end,” Elliott said, “but just it was a piece of humble pie for all of us offensively.”
Of the five offensive linemen who took the field first for the Wahoos, only guard John Paul Flores had started a college road game, and that was when he played for Dartmouth in the Ivy League. The Fighting Illini sacked UVA quarterback Brennan Armstrong five times and pressured him on almost every pass play.
“We have to be better,” sophomore center Ty Furnish said of the offensive line. “Everyone on the offense has to be better. [As for the line], we’re meeting at night more, going over everything, making sure we have all the blitzes down, all that stuff, just getting on top of it.”
The Hoos, who opened the season with a 34-17 victory over Richmond at Scott Stadium, are back home Saturday. At 2 p.m., Virginia (1-1) hosts Old Dominion (1-1) in a game to air on ACC Network.
The Cavaliers have practiced twice since losing at Illinois’ Memorial Stadium, and Elliott likes what he’s seen. It shouldn’t take a loss, however, for UVA’s players to practice with urgency, he said.
“Every day when you show up, you’ve got to make a decision, and that decision is what is your effort going to be, what’s your focus and intensity going to be, and then are you going to be aggressive?” Elliott said. “They’ve got to make a decision every single day. I’m going to remind them and challenge them and try to create an atmosphere that fosters that, but each one has to make a decision.
“I think after the victory [over Richmond the players were] like, ‘OK, we’ve got it. OK, now I see this is what Coach is talking about. We’ve got it, so, hey, let’s just go through the process.’
“No, you’ve got to attack the process. You’ve got to attack what we’re doing every single day, and you’ve got to have a certain level of execution, a certain level of precision, and we didn’t have that intensity that we needed in a couple of the practices last week. You could tell that some of the guys felt like—I’m just being transparent and honest from my perspective—that some of the guys felt like, ‘OK, we’ve got this.’ If you want to be great, you can never have that mindset. You’ve always going to be humble.”
ODU, which lost at Scott Stadium in 2019, is 0-1 all-time against UVA. But the Monarchs have upset Virginia Tech twice in recent years, first in 2018 and then again early this season in Norfolk.
“First and foremost, they’re confident,” Elliott said. “They’ve already beaten a Power Five [opponent]. They’re prideful. They want to win the state, just like we want to win the state. They’ve got a leg up on everybody because they’ve already got one victory in state. They’re capable. They’re very, very, very capable. They’ve proven that.”
Elliott said he expects the Monarchs, who lost Saturday at East Carolina to come to Charlottesville full of confidence. “They have no reason not to be. They’re going to come in here and sense that there’s blood in the water and they’re going to come after us. We’ve got to have our minds in the right place and show up Saturday ready to go.”
ON THE MEND: Punter Daniel Sparks, who sat out the second half of the Illinois game for health reasons, is doing better, Elliott said, and UVA hopes to have him against ODU, Elliott said.
Sparks, a transfer from Minnesota, has punted nine times as a Cavalier, and he’s averaging 47 yards per kick.