Game Week Finally Here for Hoos

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The fall semester began Tuesday at the University of Virginia, and that means football is no longer the overriding focus for head coach Tony Elliott’s players, as was the case during training camp. After practice Monday evening, he reminded them that they’ll be balancing athletics and academics for the next three-plus months and challenged them to excel in the classroom as well as on the field.

Summer is over for the Cavaliers.

“When you have that extra demand in your life, it definitely changes your day,” offensive guard Noah Josey said Tuesday at the Hardie Center.

“You’re not here all the time. You have to be more precise with your time. You have to be more deliberate in what you do. And so that contributes to us having to be more like pros in just really managing our time and making sure everybody’s still taking care of their bodies, they’re still taking care of the film room, their preparation, while also doing school.”

The Wahoos open their fourth season under Elliott on Saturday night, when they host Coastal Carolina in a 6 o’clock game that will air on ACC Network. That’s the first of seven home games for Virginia this fall.

“It’s game week,” Elliott said Tuesday at his weekly media availability. “It’s finally here.”

The Cavaliers opened camp late last month. At that point, with the opener more than four weeks away, “you definitely don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said linebacker James Jackson, who like Josey is a graduate student. “But you kind of eat away, and it comes closer and closer, and then before you know it, it’s game week.”

Josey said Virginia’s coaches “did a really good job this year of changing how we did camp and allowing for more rests and protecting our bodies more, and I thought it made a big difference. This is the best I’ve felt coming out of a camp in four years. I’m really excited for this week.”

This will be the second meeting between UVA and Coastal. The Cavaliers rushed for 384 yards in a 43-24 win over the Chanticleers last year in Conway, S.C. The rosters of each program has changed significantly since that game, and the Hoos are “really focusing on ourselves and our game plan,” Josey said. “There’s a lot of unknowns with Coastal, a lot of new players, new coordinators. You really don’t know who’s going to be out there or what they’re going to be in, so it’s really about focusing on UVA and what we can do to run our stuff the best.”

Virginia’s roster includes 54 players who weren’t in the program last season, and 32 of them are transfers. Nineteen of the transfers arrived on Grounds in January and went through spring practice with the Hoos, but the rest did not join the program until after the end of the of 2024-25 academic year.

With so many newcomers, Elliott said, he had to “let them come together organically. That was the biggest challenge. Because you want to try and hurry up and foster chemistry, but you can’t force it.”

UVA’s returning players “did a really, really good job of laying a lot of the groundwork with the new guys,” Elliott said. “I thought they did a really good job of policing and controlling the locker room, the weight room, to get everybody in line culturally with what the expectations are here.”

The Hoos expect to have a winning season—their first since 2019—in part because they’re much deeper on each line than previously in Elliott’s tenure. Even with tackles Monroe Mills and Makilan Thomas sidelined, available offensive linemen include Josey, McKale Boley, Brady Wilson, Drake Metcalf, Wallace Unamba, Ben York, Kevin Wigenton II, Noah Hartsoe, Ethan Sipe, Jack Witmer and Tyshawn Wyatt.

“Any time you have the depth that we have, which is incredible, you’re able to take the load off of other guys,” Josey said, “which is something we haven’t had in the years past.”

On the defensive line, transfers Fisher Camac, Cazeem Moore, Mitchell Melton, Daniel Rickert, Jacob Holmes and Hunter Osborne have joined such returning players as Jahmeer Carter, Jason Hammond, Billy Koudelka, Anthony Britton and Terrell Jones.

Elliott came to UVA from Clemson, where he was an assistant coach on teams known for their powerful defensive lines, and he appreciates the impact that position group can have.

The Cavaliers, 4-1 through five games last season, finished 5-7. In many ACC games last year, Elliott said, Virginia’s opponent had the luxury of rotating defensive linemen. That posed problems for the Cavaliers’ offense, he said, “because you’re seeing different guys, different lengths, different speed, different skill sets, and they’re fresher. So as the game goes on, you don’t see the [defensive line’s] speed drop off. Whereas offensive line-wise, you might be getting a little bit tired 50, 60 plays into the game. [When the D-line has] two guys that have only played 30 snaps apiece, it creates challenges. So it’s been really, really fun to see that competition, and it reminds me of the days [at Clemson] when we were competing for championships. When you had those D-linemen that could roll, they set the tempo for everything, both on the field and from a leadership standpoint.”

At linebacker, All-ACC candidate Kam Robinson continues to recover from a collarbone injury and won’t play Saturday. But with Jackson, Trey McDonald, Landon Danley, Maddox Marcellus and Stevie Bracey available, the Cavaliers believe they’ll be able to survive Robinson’s absence. In 2024, injuries to Jackson, Bracey, McDonald and Robinson left Virginia severely depleted at linebacker, and that contributed to the team’s late-season woes.

“I think we definitely have some more depth in the linebacker room,” Jackson said, “and then when [Robinson] comes back, it’s gonna be a huge boost for us. I think it’s gonna be something we’re able to deal with, and we’ve got playmakers who can kind of step in … I think a lot of guys are ready to step in and make an impact, for sure.”

If Elliott has a complaint about the way training camp went for his team, it’s that the Cavaliers rarely had to contend with extreme heat and humidity.

“It was really nice out there,” he said, “but that’s unfortunate, because it’s going to be really, really hot coming up the next couple of weeks … So I’m a little bit concerned down the stretch, just because we didn’t get acclimated to the heat like you like to during fall camp.”

Overall, though, Elliott said he liked “the team atmosphere that I felt daily within the building, and the guys showed up with the right energy, day in and day out, and I felt like we maximized every single day, which is difficult to do when every day is the same for the course of three, three-and-a-half weeks.”

The season opener will mark the UVA debut of quarterback Chandler Morris, a graduate transfer from North Texas who passed for 3,774 yards and 31 touchdowns last season. Morris enrolled at Virginia in January and immediately began building relationships with his new teammates.

“I mean I think we’re all meshing really well,” Morris said last week. “I think offensively we’ve picked up the playbook great and have been able to kind of install more and get really comfortable with it, just considering how much time we’ve had. So I’m really pleased with where we’re at.”

Elliott coached with Morris’ father at Clemson and has known the family for years. He remembers seeing the younger Morris throw the ball with high school players at camps, Elliott said, and “I think that’s where he developed a lot of his instincts. He was always playing with the older guys and teaching them how to play the game.”

During camp, Morris showed “the ability to extend plays,” Elliott said. “He can scramble with the ability to run or pass. He knows how to direct traffic on the move. But the biggest thing was, it was refreshing to see just the leadership that he brought every single day. And then as he became more comfortable with the system, you really started to see his playmaking ability, both with his legs and throwing the ball.”

In his opening remarks Tuesday, Elliott stressed the importance of fan support at Scott Stadium. “We really, really need a big crowd to be there early, to be loud and create an imposing atmosphere for the opponent on Saturday.”

Virginia has won six straight season openers at Scott Stadium, and Elliott wants to see that streak extended Saturday night. But his wish list is much longer than that.

“I think good teams, everybody shows up ready to go, and they get off to a fast start,” Elliott said. “I want to see a team that can control the momentum in the game … If the other team makes a play and changes the momentum in their favor, can we quickly get it shifted back in our in our favor? And then, if we create momentum, can we pounce on a team? And then can we finish in the fourth quarter?

“Those are things that I want to see, and that’s what good teams do. They start fast, they control the momentum, and then they finish in the fourth quarter. I want to see a clean game. I want to see guys go out and play disciplined and not have pre-snap penalties. Don’t do the things that beat UVA. We can’t lose to UVA. That’s where it starts. In order to win, you just can’t lose to yourself. I want to see us protect the football. I want to see good communication and organization on the sideline with the staff. I want us to look like a football team and a program that has taken full advantage of the 25 days of preparation that we had prior to the opener.”

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