Having secured only the second 10-win season in program history while vanquishing the Hokies, Virginia, which is No. 18 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, will try to collect a bigger prize next weekend: an ACC title.
Picked in the preseason media poll to finish 14th in the 17-team ACC, UVA finished first with a 7-1 record in league games. This is the first time in program history the Cavaliers have ended the regular season in sole possession of first place in the conference.
In the ACC championship game next Saturday night in Charlotte, N.C., UVA (10-2 overall) will face Duke (7-5 overall). The Blue Devils, one of five teams to finish 6-2 in ACC play, won the tiebreaker to determine who would face the Cavaliers in Charlotte.
The championship game will be a rematch of their Nov. 15 meeting at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, N.C., where Virginia defeated Duke 34-17.
“We started the year off saying we wanted to win a championship in Charlotte,” Carter said. “The Commonwealth Cup and the state championship is a step along the way, but we have our eyes set on winning next week.”
This will be Virginia’s second appearance in the ACC championship game. In 2019, the Cavaliers fell to Clemson, whose assistant coaches that season included Elliott.
Last-minute drama marked several of the Cavaliers’ games during this regular season, but there was no such suspense against Virginia Tech (3-9, 2-6). UVA led 7-0 after one quarter, 14-0 at halftime and 24-0 heading into the fourth. The Hoos stretched their lead to 27-0 before the Hokies finally scored.
“It’s a great exclamation point on the season,” said offensive guard Noah Josey, who brought the Commonwealth Cup to the postgame interview room.
Virginia’s defense held Tech to 197 yards, 57 of which came on quarterback Kyron Drones’ touchdown pass to Shamarius Peterkin with 4:21 to play. The Hokies’ six first downs were their fewest in a game since 1998, and UVA forced Drones into an abysmal performance.
Drones, who was sacked twice, completed only 4 of 16 passes for 78 yards and was intercepted twice: first by linebacker Maddox Marcellus, on the game’s first series, and then by safety Antonio Clary, the only Cavalier player remaining from the 2019 team.
“I was super excited for him,” Josey said. “Clary has been here a while, but he’s also been through an extreme amount of adversity, and he’s overcome so much. And so to see him be rewarded tonight with that pick was amazing.”
When the defense dominates the way Virginia’s did Saturday night, Josey said, “it takes a load off the offense. You go out there, you play free. When you’re playing complementary football on all three sides, it allows you to play free. You’re not worried about making mistakes, because you know somebody else can help you come back from it.”
Marcellus, who started in place of the injured Kam Robinson, shined throughout.
“He hadn’t started a game this year up until now, had been in a kind of a backup role where he was rotating,” Elliott said of Marcellus, “and to fill in on this stage and to lead us with nine tackles, a half sack, and an interception, just shows the type of young men that we have in our locker room.”
UVA’s offense totaled 380 yards. Before giving way to his backup, Daniel Kaelin, in the fourth quarter, quarterback Chandler Morris completed 21 of 35 passes for 182 yards, and he wasn’t intercepted.
Tailback J’Mari Taylor rushed 20 times for 80 yards, giving him 997 for the season. He ran for the Cavaliers’ first touchdown, on a direct snap from the 1-yard line, and passed for the second. On that play, Taylor took another direct snap, took a step forward and then pulled up and lofted a pass to tight end Sage Ennis in the end zone.
Not since Wali Lundy in 2004 had a UVA running back rushed for a TD and passed for a TD in the same game.
Wide receiver Kameron Courtney, pressed into a larger role after Cam Ross departed in the first half with a hamstring injury, led Virginia with six receptions for 50 yards. Another wideout, Trell Harris, caught five passes for 43 yards.
Morris scored UVA’s third touchdown on an 8-yard run, and kicker Will Bettridge accounted for the rest of his team’s points. Bettridge was 3 for 3 on extra points and 2 for 2 on field goals, connecting from 27 and 32 yards.
Under Elliott, the Cavaliers finished 3-7 in 2022, 3-9 in 2023 and 5-7 in 2024. In the aftermath of the November 2022 mass shooting that claimed the lives of Cavalier players Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry, UVA’s game with Virginia Tech was canceled that season. But the Hokies handled the Hoos 55-17 in 2023 and 27-17 in ’24.
For UVA to win in such convincing fashion Saturday night, “I think it makes a statement for 365 days and that’s it,” Elliott said. “We’ve got to do it all again. What happened tonight [doesn’t] carry over to next year, but I think it gives us confirmation. It gives us motivation. It gives us encouragement, a little bit of validation that we’re definitely headed in the right direction to make this a competitive rivalry and make Virginia a program of relevance locally and then also nationally.”
Elliott opened his press conference by thanking the families of Davis, Chandler and Perry, whose killer was sentenced recently in Charlottesville.
“This one’s for them, and we’re not here without the inspiration that they provide us on a daily basis,” Elliott said. “So hopefully this brings them some joy as they really kind of now get a chance to embark on their road to healing and recovery. I think that all of us outside of the families, the Davis family, the Chandler family, the Perry family, have had an opportunity to kind of move forward a little bit and grieve and heal. They haven’t. It’s been a very, very long three years for them … and hopefully tonight is just an opportunity for them to just find some joy in the program that their sons were a part of.”
