Cavaliers Focus on Staying Grounded

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In a football game it was favored to win by more than four touchdowns, then-No. 4 Ole Miss needed a second-half rally to edge visiting Washington State 24-14.

Virginia offensive lineman Drake Metcalf watched the broadcast of that game Saturday, and he suspects the Rebels might have underestimated the Cougars.

“I think we’ve been in that position before, like Washington State, where people tend to overlook us,” Metcalf said Tuesday at the Hardie Center. “They’re like, ‘Oh, UVA is coming to town. We don’t really have to worry about them this week.’ And we go in there, we put our best foot forward, we give the production that people don’t think we’re going to give, and we end up winning those football games.”

Next up for 18^th-ranked Virginia (5-1) is its annual Homecomings game, a non-conference clash with Wazzu (3-3). They’ll meet at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Scott Stadium, where the Wahoos are 4-0 this season.

Metcalf, who began his college career at Stanford, from which he has a bachelor’s degree, has talked to his UVA teammates about his experience with the Cardinal.

“I told them that when I was at Stanford, we knew we weren’t going to win the Pac-12 championship,” Metcalf said. “We weren’t going to make it to the College Football Playoff or anything like that. But our one main goal was to ruin every team’s season every single week. We wanted to stop other teams from making it to the Rose Bowl, from making it to the Pac-12 championship. And we did that.”

The Cougars may well have a similar mindset this season, Metcalf said, and Virginia can’t afford to overlook them. As head coach Tony Elliott regularly advises his team, it’s important to “attack the day, win the day, go 1-0 today,” Metcalf said. “That’s something that we really have to focus on, and I think that we are doing that as a football team right now, because we’ve started at the bottom.”

In the ACC preseason poll, Virginia was picked 14^th in the 17-team league.

“We’re coming from humble beginnings,” Metcalf said, “and I think what sets this team apart from a lot of teams is we’re hungry. We’ve been at the bottom. We know what it feels like, and we don’t want to go back. So we’re determined to give our best every single week and not look over any opponent.”

Wazzu is in its first year under Jimmy Rogers, who posted a 27-3 record in two seasons as head coach at South Dakota State, which he guided to the FCS national title in 2023.

“He’s used to winning,” Elliott said, “and so he knows what it looks like and what it takes.

Many observers “say that Virginia plays hard,” Elliott said. “Well, when you watch Washington State, they play extremely hard in all three phases. So it’s going to be a battle of who can play the hardest, but at the same time who can play sound and under control, and that’s going to be the challenge.”

This will be the first time these schools have met in football.

MIDPOINT: The Cavaliers are coming off the first of their two bye weeks. They’re off to their best start since 2017, and a win Saturday would make them bowl-eligible for the first time since 2021.

Success brings challenges, Elliott noted Tuesday. “And so this was a great reset for us as a football team,” he said of the bye weekend.

From day one, Elliott said, he’s told his players that “the hardest thing is managing success. It’s not chasing success. It’s when it happens, and now all the distractions come. And that’s really what keeps you from focusing on the little things. You get distracted by everything else, and maybe you start to see things big picture too much and not in the microscope. So this is a great opportunity to teach and learn. And what’s been fun about this football team is the challenges that I put in front of them. They’ve accepted them. And it seems like each week they’ve tried to really learn the lessons of the game that they play.”

The Hoos have six regular-season games left. They started 4-1 last season and finished with a 5-7 record, so their record at the midpoint “doesn’t matter,” Elliott said. “It’s what you do in November, what you do in December, and you’ve got to separate in October.”

In its most recent game, UVA defeated Louisville 30-27 in overtime on Oct. 4. Several of the players who missed that game with injuries are already back or close to returning, Elliott said, including punter Daniel Sparks, center Brady Wilson, offensive linemen McKale Boley and David Wohlabaugh Jr., and tailback Noah Vaughn.

“I think this bye kind of landed perfectly on the schedule,” wide receiver Cam Ross said. “It came at a perfect time, just from guys’ physical standpoint. Getting some guys back that we lost, maybe some guys that have been going since camp, honestly, and are starting to kind of feel the brunt of the year … I feel like it was a well-needed weekend, and it’s also just a great time for us to reset; assess our first six [games] and then be able to flush it good or bad, reset, refocus and focus on this next six.”

NEXT MAN UP: Virginia lost its top receiving tight end, Dakota Twitty, to a significant injury in the Louisville game. That’s likely to mean larger roles for graduate student Sage Ennis and sophomore John Rogers, who have combined to catch 10 passes for 107 yards and four touchdowns this season.

Candidates to become UVA’s No. 3 tight end include graduate student Walker Wallace, junior TeKai Kirby and true freshmen Willem Thurber and Justin Zames.

Thurber and Zames “both gotta grow up,” Elliott said. “It puts us in a situation where we don’t have quite the comfort level with the depth that we have, but we’ve got guys that are going to have to step up. Kind of like [sophomore] Ben York got thrown in when Boley goes out. It’s like, ‘Hey, next man up. You gotta be ready.’ ”

The 6-foot-7, 242-pound Wallace, a graduate of St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, has one of more intriguing résumés in college football. He came to UVA in June after graduating from Cornell, where he started last spring for the team that won the NCAA men’s lacrosse title.

“What you like is he’s a champion,” Elliott said, “and he’s used to being out there on the field. He was a really good high school football player and decided to play lacrosse. Each week he becomes more and more comfortable. And so you’re starting to see that he’s a big man that moves well, that’s willing to put his face in there and block. Now he’s in football shape and it’s starting to come back to him, so I’m excited to see how the last you know, six games go for him in his development.”

Wallace was in on the final play of UVA’s overtime win at Louisville, a 2-yard touchdown run by tailback J’Mari Taylor. Wallace’s parents, Fleet Wallace and the former Elizabeth McDaniel, are alumni of the University, where his mother was on the track & field team. His uncle Charles McDaniel starred in football for the Hoos.

ONE GAME AT A TIME: Elliott said he’s trying to keep his team “grounded and humble.” Ross, for one, has embraced that message.

“The goal is always to go 1-0 every week,” Ross said. “As we say, and as Coach Elliott just emphasizes every week, it’s like we’re chasing our best game and none of us feel like we’ve played our best game yet collectively as a team. That’s what we’ll continue to do, chase our best game, and that’ll ultimately lead to the result that we want. So for us it’s really just kind of attacking one day at a time and honing in on our details and not being so result-driven and more so just being process-oriented.”

A graduate transfer from JMU, Ross has a team-high 28 receptions for 329 yards and two touchdowns. He’s also a special teams standout who’s averaging 10.1 yards per punt return and 44.0 yards per kickoff return.

Ross hasn’t had many opportunities on kickoffs this season. He returned one 100 yards for a touchdown in the season opener against Coastal Carolina. Since then, though, he’s returned only three kickoffs, for a total of 76 yards.

Touchbacks are now routine on kickoffs. However frustrating that might be for return specialists, “that’s just part of the game,” Ross said. “We’re in a conference where you’re going to run into these strong-legged kickers, even NFL kickers.”

Ross is confident that another big return is coming. He trusts the other 10 players on the return unit, and “I just know when we get our shot, it’s going to be special,” he said.

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