Hoos Looking to Build on Hard-Earned Success

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

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When quarterback Beau Pribula was considering his options after entering the transfer portal, he looked at Virginia and saw a program that finished atop the ACC’s regular-season standings and won 11 games, including the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, in 2025.

Pribula wasn’t familiar with the struggles that preceded the Cavaliers’ breakthrough season. He knows more now. As they killed time Wednesday morning waiting for the start of ACC Football Kickoff, offensive tackle McKale Boley and linebacker Kam Robinson shared stories with their new teammate of painful defeats they experienced early in their UVA careers.

Hearing that, Pribula said later, was a little jarring, “because of all the success that they had last year.”

That success was especially meaningful for the UVA players, like Boley, who’d suffered through a string of losing campaigns. In 2022, the Wahoos’ first season under head coach Tony Elliott, they finished 3-7 and dealt with a tramautic shooting that took the lives of three players. Virginia went 3-9 in 2023 and 5-7 in ’24, and that made its acomplishments in ’25 that much more special.

“I definitely have a huge appreciation,” said Boley, who entered the program as a freshman in 2022.

In the spring, UVA’s returning players received their Gator Bowl rings during a team event at a Charlottesville bowling alley. Sitting next to offensive guard Noah Josey, who arrived at Virginia in 2021, “I almost had tears coming to my eyes,” Boley recalled.

With so much player movement in today’s game—UVA has 46 newcomers this year, for example—“not a lot of guys know what we had to go through just to get to this point,” Boley said, “the losing seasons, the getting blown out, the being beat, all those different things. Just seeing that all the work we've done has paid off and the culture that Coach E was trying to build when he first got here is finally being fully set in place, it's just really good to see.”

Representing UVA at the ACC’s annual preseason media gathering were Elliott, Robinson, Pribula and Boley. Training camp begins in a couple weeks for the Cavaliers, and that will end what Elliot called a “really, really fun offseason.”

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— Virginia Football (@UVAFootball) July 15, 2026

 

What made that possible, he added, were “things that have taken place years in advance. I want to thank all of our supporters, fans and donors for all that they've done investing in this program. I think that everybody knows the road that we been on at the University of Virginia since taking over as the head coach with our new staff. I’m grateful for all of the adversity that we went through in the early stages of building the program. But I’m more thankful for just the commitment, the commitment of the staff, commitment of the players, to the vision. What we were able to experience last year was just that vision coming to life.”

Elliott, who played at Clemson, later spent 11 years at his alma mater as a member of head coach Dabo Swinney’s staff.

“I was very fortunate to be a part of a program that was built on a foundation,” Elliott said. “That’s where our confidence came from, and so naturally that was going to be the inspiration for what we wanted to do at the University of Virginia from a foundational standpoint.  And then we had to get into the environment and see how to make that foundation fit there.

“That’s where we started, and I think what you saw last year was a culmination of folks believing in that foundation, because we had some tremendous adversity along the way. But I think we're trending in the right direction. I think now we can say the footing is very solid for us to have an opportunity with each team to build upon that foundation. The foundation is set. We just have to have everybody adapt kind of to the environment and then build off of what's been done before.”

A year ago, in the media’s preseason poll, UVA was picked to finish 14^th out of the ACC’s 17 teams. When the 2026 edition of the poll is released late this month, the Hoos figure to get more respect from voters, but Boley doesn’t expect that to change the team’s mentality.

“You kind of have to treat them the same,” Boley said. “Even when we were 14th last year, we paid no attention to that, because that's not something we believed. If it comes out and we're higher up [this year], who cares? At the end of the day, those are all preseason rankings and everybody's got to play a full season, so we'll just go out there and focus on us and play the season and worry about all the rankings once everything's over.”

His program’s new challenge, Elliott said, is handling success. To do that, he said, “we have to acknowledge what we were able to accomplish last year, but we have to have a very clear understanding that what happened last year doesn't automatically carry over to this year, and you're not entitled to having that same level of success on the field.

“It's all about the input and [carrying] over the commitment to the process, not focusing on the results of last year, but the commitment to the process. Can we carry that over and keep the blinders on and stay focused on the things that make you successful. What is that? That's just really your commitment to doing the little things, then finding a way to improve upon the things that you're already good at. Then acknowledging your weaknesses and attacking and improving those.”

Robinson, who was runner-up in voting for ACC Defensive Player of the Year in 2025, said the Cavaliers must continue to “do the little things we were doing last year. You can't just go talk about what we did last year.”

The team’s returning players have to set expectations for the newcomers, Robinson said. “We’ve already got our standard laid out, so all you gotta do is get in line and we can show you all the way.”

From a team that finished 11-3 and reclaimed the Commonwealth Cup from Virginia Tech, UVA has to replace such standouts as quarterback Chandler Morris, tailback J’Mari Taylor, tight end Sage Ennis, center Brady Wilson, wide receivers Cam Ross and Trell Harris, linebacker James Jackson and defensive linemen Jahmeer Carter, Daniel Rickert and Mitchell Melton.

Back, however, is a core of key players, led by an extraordinarily experienced offensive line.

“You guys are all, like, 25,” Pribula told Boley.

That’s not quite accurate, but by the time the Cavaliers open the season on Aug. 29 against NC State at Scott Stadium, their projected starters up front—Boley at left tackle, Josey at left guard, Drake Metcalf at center, Makilan Thomas at right guard and Monroe Mills at right tackle—will be 22, 25, 24, 23 and 24, respectively.

“I’m the youngest of the starters somehow, and I’m old,” Boley said, smiling.

He and his fellow offensive linemen aren’t putting extra pressure on themselves, Boley said, but “we set the tone, so the team's only going to go as far as we go. If we go out there and we're lackadaisical and we give a half effort, the people around us are going to do that. So we know that even if we don't feel like it, we're going to go out there and do our best just to inspire others. Our goal is to inspire confidence in our skilled players. So if our skilled players see us busting our ass, they're going to bust their ass. It's just how the game works.”

Pribula, a 6-foot-2, 209-pound graduate transfer from Missouri, will head into training camp late this month atop the depth chart at quarterback. He’s a gifted athlete who rushed for six touchdowns last season.

“The thing with Beau is that Beau is strong,” Boley said. “It’s not like he's fast and frail like a skinny, fast guy. Beau has muscle. Beau is powerful. So not only is he fast, it’s a different type of speed when you're running with power than just speed and no power.”

Pribula, who began his college career at Penn State, enrolled at UVA in January and immediately felt at home, he said. “I feel like I'm part of the family. I feel like I've been in the program long enough to where I just feel like it means a lot to me. Not even playing a game yet, but it already does.”

What’s impressed him most about the culture Elliott has established at Virginia, Pribula said, is “the quality of the young people. It's just kind of blown me away. Everybody is just such a good person, whether that's staff or coaches or players. It just makes such a big difference, because the people that you're playing with, being coached by, are people that you can trust. They’re your best friends.”

The Cavaliers’ most talented defensive player is Robinson, a senior whose 2025 season ended prematurely when he tore his ACL on Nov. 15 in a 34-17 rout of Duke in Durham, N.C.

Robinson missed not only UVA’s victory over Virginia Tech in the regular-season finale, but the ACC championship game and the Gator Bowl. Virginia lost in overtime to Duke in the ACC title game in Charlotte.

It’s unclear if he’ll be cleared to play in the season opener, but Robinson’s rehab is progressing well, and he’s looking forward to leading what should be a stout corps of linebackers.

“That’s all I’ve been thinking about,” Robinson said, “getting back on the grass.”

This was his first serious injury, and it’s “definitely been hard going from playing to just sitting back and watching my teammates play,” Robinson said.

That’s fueled No. 5 in his rehab. “I keep telling myself, ‘We're going to play again. It's not the last. We're going to get back to where we were at,' " Robinson said. "My only goal is getting back to where I was at and becoming better.”

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