Schedule Leaves Hoos Little Room for Error

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Around 7 p.m. Saturday, under the lights at Scott Stadium, the University of Virginia football team reached the midpoint of its regular season. The first half included several memorable wins for the Cavaliers, and they hoped to have another one to celebrate Saturday.

It wasn’t to be. UVA gave up a late touchdown to ACC rival Louisville and lost 24-20. A win over the Cardinals would have moved the Wahoos to the brink of bowl-eligibility. Instead, the Hoos fell to 4-2 overall and 2-1 in ACC play, with a daunting schedule ahead of them.

Virginia’s six remaining regular-season opponents have a combined overall record of 27-10. Four are ranked in the latest Associated Press poll, and that doesn’t include Virginia Tech, UVA’s nemesis for the past two decades.

Still, the Cavaliers, who already have won more games than they did in 2022 or ’23, are looking forward to the battles that await them.

“One thousand percent,” sophomore quarterback Anthony Colandrea said. “I feel like we’re playing good football right now. We just have to execute and finish in the fourth quarter.”

Third-year head coach Tony Elliott, at his postgame press conference, said his players were “hurting right now, but I don’t think it’s a football team that’s lost confidence … I think they still know that everything is out there in front of them. We just gotta take it one game at a time, and we’re gonna learn and we’re gonna grow. So we’ve had an opportunity to learn in success and now we got a little bit of heartbreak. But I know the character of that football team, and they’re gonna respond the right way.”

Louisville (4-2, 2-1), which has been ranked as high as No. 15 in the AP poll this season, came to Scott Stadium on a two-game losing streak. After Virginia rallied for 13 unanswered second-half points to take a 20-17 lead, it appeared the Cardinals might leave with a third straight defeat. But the Cards drove 67 yards for the go-ahead touchdown, an 11-yard pass from quarterback Tyler Shough to tight end Jamari Johnson with 1:55 left.

That drive also included an 18-yard reception by wideout Caullin Lacy, an 18-yard run by tailback Isaac Brown, and a 14-yard reception by Johnson.

“We gave up too many big plays,” UVA sophomore linebacker Kam Robinson said.

Even so, the Cavaliers had a chance to secure their third comeback win of the season. They took possession at the 25-yard line and quickly drove to the Louisville 39-yard line. But four straight incompletions followed, and the Hoos’ hopes evaporated.

On each of the first three downs, Colandrea tried to connect with wideout Malachi Fields, who was well-covered in each case. On fourth down, a defender appeared to hold Colandrea’s target, tight end Tyler Neville, but no penalty was called, and the Cards were able to run out the clock.

“They made the plays at the end of the game to win the game, bottom line,” Elliott said. “But we’re super proud of our guys for competing, to be in that position. We continue to, I think, take steps forward, even though we didn’t win the game.”

On the game’s opening possession, Virginia drove 75 yards for a touchdown, the final yard coming on a fourth-and-goal sneak by reserve quarterback Grady Brosterhous. Will Bettridge added the extra point, and the score remained 7-0 until early in the second quarter, when Isaac Brown, moments after rushing for a 27-yard gain, ran it in from the 7.

Brown, a freshman, finished with 146 yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries.

“He can run, for sure,” Robinson said.

Late in the first half, with the score 7-7, the Hoos passed up what would have been a 20-yard field-attempt for Bettridge and went for the touchdown on fourth-and-goal from the Louisville 3. Colandrea’s pass, intended for true freshman wide receiver Kameron Courtney, fell incomplete, and the teams went into halftime tied.

The Cardinals scored the first 10 points of the second half—on a field goal and a 14-yard run by Isaac Brown—before UVA’s comeback began.

“I’m proud of our team,” Elliott said, “because they didn’t flinch.”

Bettridge kicked two field goals in the third quarter, connecting from 31 and 23 yards, to cut the Cavaliers’ deficit to 17-13, and UVA regained the lead early in the fourth quarter.

On third-and-6 from the Louisville 46, Colandrea avoided the pass rush and lofted a pass to tailback Xavier Brown in the right flat. Brown, who’s from Lexington, Ky., caught the ball at the 40, broke a tackle and then sprinted down the sideline to the end zone. Bettridge’s PAT made it 20-17 with 10:03 to play.

Louisville “made the plays at the end of the game to win the game, bottom line,” Elliott said. “But we’re super proud of our guys for competing, to be in that position. We continue to, I think, take steps forward, even though we didn’t win the game. Just proud of the guys for making it a four-quarter ball game, getting it to that point.”

UP NEXT: Virginia visits No. 10 Clemson (5-1, 4-0) next Saturday. The noon game will air on ACC Network.

“We’re going to flush this loss and get back to work on Monday,” Xavier Brown said. “We’ve just got to come back and go to work, and we’ve got to clean up the little things, those mental mistakes and the little plays that end up adding up over time. We can’t have those next week against a good football team.”

The 10^th-ranked Tigers have won five straight since dropping their opener to Georgia. Clemson romped 49-14 over Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Saturday afternoon.

This will be Elliott’s first game against Clemson since he left Dabo Swinney’s staff after the 2021 season. Elliott is a former Clemson wide receiver who spent 11 seasons as an assistant at his alma mater.

The Cavaliers haven’t played in Death Valley since 2020, when they fell 41-23 to the Tigers. Since losing 30-10 at Scott Stadium in 2004, Clemson has won five straight over UVA. The Tigers lead the series 40-8-1.

SHORT-HANDED: Among the Cavaliers who missed the game because of injuries were wideouts Chris Tyree and Trell Harris, tight ends Dakota Twitty and Sage Ennis, tailback Jack Griese, safety Antonio Clary and cornerback Dre Walker. Moreover, starting offensive tackle McKale Boley left the game in the third quarter after hurting his knee and didn’t return.

“We’ve got guys that are down, some for the season, but guys just keep stepping up, and that’s why I’m so proud of this football team,” Elliott said. “Whatever the adversity is, they just keep going. They don’t make excuses, they just keep working, they keep fighting … But in the end, we have to take ownership of the few plays that we could have made that we didn’t.”

STRONG PRODUCTION: The Cavaliers finished with 449 yards of offense, to 408 for the Cardinals. Colandrea led Virginia in rushing, with 84 yards on 15 carries, and completed 26 of 45 passes for 279 yards and one TD. His favorite targets were Fields (nine receptions for 129 yards) and Neville (career-high seven catches for 64 yards).

Through six games, Colandrea has completed 125 of 194 passes (64.4 percent) for 1,490 yards and nine TDs, with four interceptions. Fields has 37 catches for 541 yards and three TDs, and Neville has 19 receptions for 261 yards and two TDs.

On defense, Robinson has recorded a team-high three sacks in five games. (He missed UVA’s Sept. 14 game against Maryland). Senior safety Jonas Sanker leads Virginia with 49 tackles.

PIVOTAL SEQUENCES: Early in the second half, with Louisville leading 10-7, UVA’s Daniel Sparks attempted a rugby-style punt that ended in disaster. Sparks’ low kick hit the back of blocker Charlie Patterson, and the Cards recovered at the Virginia 14. On the next play, Isaac Brown ran 14 yards for a touchdown.

In the fourth quarter, with Virginia leading 20-17, true freshman safety Ethan Minter ended a Louisville possession with a leaping interception at the UVA 3. On first down, tailback Kobe Pace ran for an 8-yard gain, but the Cavaliers’ drive stalled there, in part because of a penalty, and they had to punt.

The Cards got the ball back with 6:33 left and put together their decisive touchdown drive.

SOUND BITES: The victory over UVA was the Cardinals’ third straight in a series they lead 8-5. Among the postgame comments:

* Elliott on his message to his team: “The message was we gotta learn, we gotta take the good with the bad, we gotta learn, we gotta grow. And ACC games that are one-possession games that go down to the fourth quarter are gonna be determined by four to six plays, bottom line. And tip our hat to Louisville, they found a way. But I thought our kids competed, I thought they played their tails off. They never quit. But we just had a couple of critical mistakes and a couple of errors that resulted in … the score not going our way in the end.”

* Elliott: “You just saw a football team that’s persevering, regardless of any personnel issues that we have. My guys are stepping up, they believe. They’re fighting, they’re scrapping. So there’s a lot to really like about this about this football team, but most importantly, we got a group of young men that believe in each other. They believe in what this program is all about and then they’re laying it on the line every Saturday for each other, for this university.”

* Elliott on Colandrea: “I thought AC just played with a lot of poise tonight. He had a great demeanor about himself. And I just wish we could have found those four or five plays on our side to be on the winning end.”

* Elliott on Minter, who enrolled at UVA in January: “He showed up day one fully committed to the transition to play in the secondary, and he took complete ownership of the playbook. He knows the playbook inside and out.”

* Robinson on Minter: “I feel like he did great. When he got on the field with me, all I did was tell him, just before every snap take a deep breath and breathe, clear your mind and just play ball, be a ball player.”

* Minter: “I feel like I had confidence in my preparation, and my coaches and my teammates, they helped me prepare. They helped me a tremendous amount so I feel like I went in there just confident. It was a great feeling getting in the game.”

* Fields on bouncing back from the loss: “The key is just getting in the film room Monday and just seeing the things that we did well, the things that we did bad, seeing how we can be better for next week and execute. Because it comes down to those five or six plays that we didn’t execute and just fixing those mistakes and being better next week.’

* UVA linebacker James Jackson on preparing for Clemson: “It’s gonna take a really, really, really good week of practice. We’ve got to play our best game from here on out, every single game to win. So it’s gonna take our best game and we just gotta be super prepared for them.”

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