Spring Finale Next for Hoos

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When the transfer portal for college football re-opens next week, Virginia will be among the programs looking to bolster their rosters for the coming season.

The Cavaliers open Aug. 30 against Coastal Carolina at Scott Stadium, and their options will have increased by then, and not only because of the transfers they expect to add. Thirteen more scholarship freshmen will arrive on Grounds in June—six enrolled in January after graduating early from high school—and most of the UVA players sidelined this spring by injuries should be available when training camp begins in August.

Still, if a finished product won’t be on display Saturday at Scott Stadium, UVA fans will find much to interest them anyway. For the annual Blue-White game, which will air from noon to 2 p.m. on ACC Network, the Wahoos’ spring roster has been split into two teams, and many of the players who’ll take the field are transfers who were elsewhere last season, including quarterbacks Chandler Morris (North Texas) and Daniel Kaelin (Nebraska).

Head coach Tony Elliott said Thursday evening, after his team’s 14^th and penultimate practice of the spring, that he’s reminded his players that the Blue-White game is “an opportunity for us to show our faithful the work that we’ve been putting in. It’s an opportunity for us to compete.

“The next time we’re together is in fall camp, and the next game is going to be a real game. So this is an opportunity for us as coaches to evaluate some of these new guys in a game-type environment. The fans get to see all the guys that they’ve heard about that have come in from the portal, so to speak, and some of these midyear freshmen.”

Scott Stadium is “sacred grass,” Elliott said, and so the Cavaliers have “a responsibility to go out and compete and put together a good showing.”

Virginia’s players say they take that responsibility seriously.

“Any time you get to put the pads on and you go to the Scott Stadium, it’s a special day,” defensive end Billy Koudelka said. “And I think it’s a day that we’re all going to look forward to, being able to put the actual game jerseys on and get ready to go in front of some fans and family.”

Tailback Xavier Brown said the Blue-White game is “an opportunity for us to show the fans what we’ve put together this spring with the new guys we’re bringing in and just showcase what we’ve built so far.”

In charge of the Blue team is Terry Heffernan, who coaches the Cavaliers’ offensive line and coordinates their run game. Head coach of the White team is Keith Gaither, who coordinates Virginia’s special teams and oversees the running backs.

For the first quarter and the first five minutes of the second quarter, Elliott said, the clock will stop as it would in an official game. After that, a running clock will be employed.

“If we get into a two-minute situation in the end of half or end of the game, we will play that with normal clock rules,” Elliott said.

The quarterbacks will wear orange jerseys, Elliott said, signifying they are not to be hit.

The offenses aren’t likely to dive too deep into the playbook, but there will “be some new wrinkles that we’ve just got to get on film,” Elliott said, “because we’re continuing to evaluate guys. So I’m not gonna be paranoid, so to speak. I’m gonna let the guys play, but there are some concepts that we won’t break out till fall camp. But for the most part, we’re gonna let our guys go play.”

Of the 19 transfers who joined the program in January, offensive tackle Monroe Mills (Louisville) was among the most highly regarded, but he won’t suit up for the Hoos this fall. Elliott confirmed Thursday that Mills suffered a season-ending injury at a practice this spring.

“Just very unfortunate,” Elliott said, “but he’s in good spirits and excited and we’re going to do everything we can to help him recover fully, and hopefully we’ll be able to to see him out you know on the field in a Cavalier uniform in the future.”

Jam Jackson, a returning starter at cornerback, also suffered a knee injury recently, Elliott said, and he’s still being evaluated.

The first 14 practices have given the coaching staff a good read on what the newcomers can do physically, Elliott said. But conditions will be different Saturday.

“I want to see guys respond to the to the ebbs and flows of the game,” Elliott said, “because what you don’t know about some of these newer guys that are coming in, and some of these young guys as well, is how they’re going to respond to the adversity … in the course of the game.”

Of the 19 transfers who enrolled midyear, 10 line up on offense, eight on defense, and one (long-snapper Bryce Robinson) on special teams.

“I believe we’ve done a good job of finding the guys, targeting the guys that fit what we want to be as a culture,” offensive coordinator Des Kitchings said. “And that transition has been really smooth, partly because of the current state of our locker room, the guys that returned, and then the guys that came in embraced who we are. Guys that came in are coming from winning programs, so typically those type of guys understand what’s required, the day-to-day, the little things. So that meshing of the transfers and our current roster has been probably the smoothest transition as we could have hoped for.”

Five of the transfers are defensive linemen who, together with such returning players are Jahmeer Carter, Anthony Britton, Jason Hammond, Terrell Jones and Koudelka, make that probably the Cavaliers’ deepest position group.

“You’d love to rotate multiple guys at each of those spots,” defensive coordinator John Rudzinski said. “If you can keep snap counts [for each lineman] somewhere between 35 to 40, just you’re fresher. And then particularly as you go deeper in the season and you play in that competitive ACC schedule, it allows you to just continue to make sure you’re putting great bodies out there. And then there’s no one that wears down. So that’s what’s exciting. And then also, hopefully you can add a few different pieces as far as packages as you try to play to each young man’s strengths.”

Virginia’s top two quarterbacks last season were Anthony Colandrea and Tony Muskett. Neither is on the team this year, and UVA’s starter this fall is likely to be Morris, who’s heading into his final season of eligibility, or Kaelin, who has four years left.

Once spring practice ends, Elliott said, the coaching staff will “really dive into” how best to use the quarterbacks. “But the [qualities] that I’ve talked about in the beginning, you see those things. Obviously, Chandler has great movement skills. What you did get to see is that Danny moves a lot better than you anticipate. You’re starting to see, I think, the latter part. You can see the touch that Danny has on the on the deep ball, and then you really got to see kind of the improv skills that Chandler has, his ability to extend plays, not just with his legs, but in the pocket and the savviness. So a lot of the things that we anticipated based off of our evaluation we confirmed. And then now that we’ve put them through our system, we’ll really be able to go back and evaluate now that we got some downtime the rest of this offseason.”

The Cavaliers are thinnest at cornerback and at tailback, and they’ll try to address those needs when the portal re-opens, Elliott said. The focus this weekend, though, is on the Blue-White game.

“Any time that you get to play the game of football in Scott Stadium or in one of these unbelievable arenas across the country, you simulate a little bit of the emotion of what it is to play college football,” Rudzinski said, “and that’s why it’s important for us as a program to go out and compete … And then also, too, I think just for the community, it’s neat to have that and to have our friends, our families, and our supporters there with us.”

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