Bye Week Finds Hoos in Enviable Position

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — On the penultimate weekend of the regular season, the University of Virginia football team will sit back and watch its ACC counterparts pummel each other.

The Cavaliers, who have a bye this weekend, don’t play again until Nov. 29, and by then there will be more clarity in the race for the two spots in next month’s ACC championship game.

At 6-1 in conference play, UVA (9-2 overall) is tied for first in the ACC. Three other teams have one ACC loss—Georgia Tech (6-1), Pittsburgh (5-1) and SMU (5-1)—but that group will shrink by at least one this weekend. On Saturday, Georgia Tech meets Pitt in Atlanta and SMU hosts Louisville in Dallas.

If three teams finish the regular season tied atop the ACC standings, the tiebreakers to determine which two advance to Charlotte, N.C., will be employed, and they can be complicated. To even be in that final group, though, the Wahoos, who are ranked No. 19 in the latest Associated Press poll, know they almost certainly must reclaim the Commonwealth Cup.

The kickoff time won’t be announced until this weekend, but UVA is hosting Virginia Tech at Scott Stadium on Nov. 29. Only twice this century have the Hoos defeated the Hokies—in 2003 and 2019, both times in Charlottesville—but they’re eager to tackle the challenge awaiting them in two weekends.

“It’s one more for one more,” quarterback Chandler Morris said Saturday evening after Virginia’s 34-17 win over Duke at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, N.C.

JMU might disagree, but UVA and Virginia Tech, the only Power 4 schools in the Commonwealth, see their annual battle as “the state championship.”

The Cavaliers added more than 50 new players this year, many of whom weren’t well-versed in the history of a series that dates back to 1895, including Morris and defensive tackle Jacob Holmes. But the newcomers learned quickly.

“I know how passionate this state is about this game, and you can’t ask for much more,” said Morris, a graduate transfer from North Texas. “It’s the state championship and it’s going to be electric.”

Holmes, a graduate transfer from Fresno State, said he grasped the importance of the annual battle for the Commonwealth Cup “the second I walked in the door at UVA, and I’m excited to have this opportunity to play [Tech] this year.”

This is Tony Elliott’s fourth season as the Hoos’ head coach. Players who’ve been in the program as long as or longer than Elliott include offensive lineman Noah Josey, who arrived on Grounds in 2021, Bronco Mendenhall’s final season as Virginia’s head coach.

The Cavaliers, 6-6 in 2021, finished 3-7, 3-9 and 5-7, respectively, in their first three seasons under Elliott. Now, though, they have an opportunity to become only the second team in program history to win 10 or more games. (UVA finished 10-3 in 1989.)

“There’s been a lot of trials and tribulations throughout the years,” Josey said Saturday night in Durham. “And so to be able to finally kind of put it together and win these culture games, these team games, is great. I think it comes down to the culture of our team. We’ve been building it since January, and so it feels great to see all that pay off.”

At 9-2, the Cavaliers have their best record through 11 games since 2007. That was also the last time UVA won six of its first seven ACC games. Among ACC teams, Virginia ranks fourth in scoring offense (33.7 ppg) and fifth in scoring defense (21.2).

“I’m so happy for y’all,” Elliott told his players after the Duke game. “Some of the things this team is doing, you won’t recognize till you’re down the road.”

Coming off a loss to Wake Forest, UVA arrived in Durham looking to regain momentum, especially on offense. In four of its five previous games, Virginia had finished with fewer than 330 yards of total offense. Stout defense had helped the Hoos win four of those games, but Elliott wanted to see his team play complementary football at Wallace Wade Stadium.

Elliott got his wish. “I felt like this was probably the most complete game that we’ve played in all three phases,” he said.

Elliott reminded his team before the game that it was capable of dominant performances. “I said, ‘Fellas, I recognize it. I’ve seen it in you, and I’m telling you, you’ve got it. Now you have to go showcase it to the world for everybody else to tell you that you’ve got it.’ ”

On defense, UVA held Duke to season lows in several categories, including total offense (255 yards), rushing yards (42), passing yards (213), pass completions (18), points scored (17) and first downs (11).

Virginia’s standouts on defense included Holmes (five tackles), ends Fisher Camac (two sacks) and Mitchell Melton (two sacks, forced fumble, fumble recovery) and cornerback Emmanuel Karnley (three pass break-ups).

On offense, the Cavaliers displayed the explosiveness they’d shown early in the season, when they scored 48 points against Coastal Carolina, 55 against William & Mary, 48 against Stanford and 46 against Florida State. Against Duke, Virginia totaled 540 yards.

Morris completed 23 of 35 passes for 316 yards and two touchdowns. Wide receiver Trell Harris caught eight passes for 161 yards, both career highs, and one TD. Tailback J’Mari Taylor rushed for 133 yards and two touchdowns, and Virginia didn’t allow a sack.

“We just got back to who we were,” Morris said.

“It was super important to us get the momentum that we had earlier in the season back on track,” Josey said, “and we knew we had it. We still have all the pieces that were here earlier in the season. So it’s about just getting the details down and giving the strain needed to go perform.”

The ACC announced its players of the week Monday, and Camac (defensive lineman), Taylor (running back) and Harris (wide receiver).

As dominant as the Hoos were for most of the game Saturday, they grew complacent for a stretch in the fourth quarter, and Duke capitalized with two touchdowns. In big games, Elliott told his team, such lapses can be the difference between winning and losing.

“I was pretty animated there in the fourth quarter,” Elliott said, “because I felt like there was a second where we just relaxed for a millisecond, which created an opportunity for them to put up 14 points on us.”

Will Bettridge’s second field goal, a 42-yarder, made it a three-score game with 5:42 to play, and Duke didn’t threaten again thereafter. Still, Elliott said, “I really wanted to challenge the team to take another step, to just finish, with no relaxing on the sideline, because again, that’s how football works. You relax for one play and it could change the entire game.”

The coaching staff will hammer home that point as the Hoos prepare for the Hokies’ visit to Charlottesville. And there will be rest as well as practice this week. UVA has played on each of the past five Saturdays, so the bye week is “coming at a great time,” Morris said.

Several players who missed the Duke game with injuries, including offensive lineman Kevin Wigenton II, tailback Noah Vaughn and wideout Jayden Thomas, might be available for the regular-season finale.

The goal, Josey said, “is to get everybody as healthy as possible to prepare as best we can to go win a state championship.”

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