CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Looking to upset a top-10 opponent on the road for the second straight year, the UVA football team stayed connected to Clemson for a half Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium.
The 10th-ranked Tigers blew the game open in the third quarter, however, and rolled to a 48-31 victory in Virginia head coach Tony Elliott’s first game back at his alma mater.
Elliott, who’s in his third year at UVA, is a former Clemson wide receiver who spent 11 seasons as an assistant on Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney’s staff.
“It was great to see people before the game,” Elliott said afterward, “but as I told the guys last night, my job is to stay focused, to focus on being the best version of myself so I can help this football team. And unfortunately, I’ve got to do a better job, because I didn’t quite have them ready to go execute at a high level today.”
The loss was the second in a row for the Cavaliers, who fell to 4-3 overall and 2-2 in ACC play. The Tigers improved to 6-1 and 5-0.
“That’s a really good football team,” Virginia quarterback Anthony Colandrea said. “They made adjustments for us and they executed in the second half when we didn’t.”
Since losing to Georgia in the season opener, Clemson has scored 291 points, an average of 48.5 per game. Against UVA, which was missing two defensive starters (safety Antonio Clary and linebacker James Jackson), the Tigers punted only twice and finished with 539 yards on offense. They had nine pass plays that gained at least 15 yards and three runs that gained 10 yards or more.
In scouting the Tigers, Elliott said, he saw “they were generating a lot of explosives and they were able to just overwhelm people through the explosive play. So that was a point of emphasis. If we could keep everything in front, not let them get behind us, see if we can fit the run game, make them put together long drives. That was the plan, but unfortunately we weren’t able to execute the plan today.”
In front of a near-capacity crowd of 80,100, Virginia played Clemson to a 3-3 tie in the first quarter and then capitalized on the game’s first turnover. UVA sophomore linebacker Kam Robinson intercepted a Cade Klubnik pass and returned it 8 yards to the Clemson 34. Colandrea’s 20-yard scramble on third-and-17 extended the ensuing drive, which ended with his 8-yard touchdown pass to Dakota Twitty, a converted wide receiver.
Will Bettridge added the extra point, and UVA led 10-3 with 12:26 left in the second quarter, marking its first lead over the Tigers since 2004, a span of five games in the series. But Clemson responded with 35 unanswered points to take a commanding lead late in the third quarter, and Virginia’s upset hopes evaporated along the way.
“I’ve been on the other side for a long time too,” Elliott said. “So I kind of know the formula. That’s generally what happens. It’s a few plays or a few mistakes by the opponent, then [the Tigers] capitalize. And before you know it, they’ve jumped on you and you’re like, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ Because it happened so fast.
“So that’s why every play is critical. Every play could be the break in the game. You never know when it’s coming. And the third quarter was kind of the break in the game. They made some plays, we made some mistakes, we didn’t make some plays. And then before you know it, you’re chasing a couple scores. And chasing a couple scores versus that team at home is very difficult.”
The Wahoos finished with 346 yards on offense. Much of that came in the final five minutes, when the Hoos, with fifth-year senior Tony Muskett at quarterback, rallied for touchdown drives of 65 and 75 yards.
With 2:11 to play, Muskett threw an 8-yard TD pass to tight end Sackett Wood Jr. and followed that with a two-point conversion pass to tailback Kobe Pace, who began his college career at Clemson.
Virginia’s final points came on Muskett’s 65-yard touchdown pass to wideout Ethan Davies, with whom he also played at West Springfield High School in Northern Virginia. UVA trailed by as many as 28 points (38-10) late in the third and into the fourth, but outscored the Tigers 21-10 in the fourth. The Hoos have been impressive in fourth quarters this season, outscoring their opponents by a margin of 66-37.
“So you saw bits and pieces of the DNA that we’re trying to establish and create as a program,” Elliott said, “but you also saw some areas where we’re just not quite there yet, and that’s my job as a head coach to figure out what to do in order to get us over that hump.
Colandrea completed 15 of 26 passes for 159 yards and two touchdowns. The second covered 45 yards and went to senior wideout Malachi Fields, who finished with three catches for 65 yards. Another UVA receiver, Chris Tyree, caught four passes for 23 yards. A season-high 12 different Cavaliers hauled in receptions, including four different touchdown scorers.
On a day when Virginia rushed for only 68 yards, tailback Xavier Brown led the team with 35 yards on 10 carries.
“Our guys will grow from this,” Elliott said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to learn kind of what progress we’ve made and then the areas where we truly need to make more progress. I knew this was going to be one of those type of games where we get to truly evaluate where we are as a program. And today we got to see that and we’ll own it. We’ll go back to work.”
Asked about Swinney, Elliott said his former boss is “one of the best in the business as a coach, but also one of the best human beings. I’m just very fortunate to have had a chance to learn a lot from him. I had a chance to go compete, and like I thought, he wasn’t going to take it easy on me, he wasn’t going to take it easy on us. He’s going to do what he does, and he prepares his football teams to go finish and to go win and to not only win but to try and dominate.”
UP NEXT: The Cavaliers will play a second straight noon game, this one at Scott Stadium. UVA hosts North Carolina (3-4, 0-3) next Saturday in an ACC game to air on The CW.
What’s known as “the South’s Oldest Rivalry” began in 1892 with a 30-18 win by Virginia in Charlottesville. The Tar Heels lead the series 65-59-4, but the Cavaliers prevailed 31-27 last season at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C. Carolina came into that game ranked No. 10 nationally.
UNC, which has lost four straight games since defeating North Carolina Central on Sept. 14, did not play this weekend.