Emotional Occasion Next for Cavaliers

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. —  The Virginia Cavaliers are happy to be back home at Scott Stadium this weekend, but football will be secondary in some ways Saturday night. The occasion is the annual UVA Strong game, which honors the lives and memories of Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry.

“It’s a big, big day for our program,” head coach Tony Elliott said during his weekly media availability at the Hardie Center.

The 2022 season was Elliott’s first at Virginia, and it ended prematurely after a tragic shooting on Nov. 13, 2022, took the lives of three of his players: Davis, Chandler and Perry. They were killed after returning to Grounds from a class field trip, and two other UVA students were injured in the shooting, including running back Mike Hollins.

“Everybody knows what happened back in November of ’22,” Elliott said Tuesday, “and it's something that, as a program, we carry forward every single day. As I said back then, we were going to turn tragedy into triumph, and we were not moving on, we were moving forward. And here we are, almost four years forward, and still it's a very, very big component of our program.”

Seven players from the 2022 team are still on the roster, including kicker Will Bettridge, who wears jersey No. 41 in remembrance of Perry. They were close friends who came to UVA from Gulliver Prep in Miami.

Bettridge, who was a first-year in 2022, said current Cavaliers who weren’t on Grounds that season ask him and other players from that team about Davis, Chandler and Perry, who wore jersey Nos. 1, 15 and 41, respectively.

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with a bunch of guys on the team about what D’Sean meant to me and how all three of them were on and off the field, which has been great,” Bettridge said. “And I think the coaching staff does a great job obviously in just describing them as individuals, not just as football players. And it just really helps all the guys just kind of understand that you're playing for something bigger than yourself and that this program is going to carry this weight for a long time.”

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— Virginia Football (@UVAFootball) September 21, 2026

At 6 p.m. Saturday, Virginia (2-1) hosts Delaware (2-1) at Scott Stadium. The mothers of Davis, Chandler and Perry are expected to attend the game, and Elliott is hoping fans will show their support by turning out in force.

Last November, an Albemarle County judge sentenced the shooter, Christopher Jones Jr., to five life terms plus 23 years for the murders of Davis, Chandler and Perry and the wounding of Hollins and Marlee Morgan.

As the fourth anniversary of the shooting approaches, Elliott noted Tuesday that “for the families, this is probably more like year one, because they just recently got some clarity on the sentencing. And so now they're finally at a place where they can move forward and try to truly grieve the loss of their loved one. And so we’ve got different folks that are in different phases of the journey to healing and recovery.”

The tragedy rocked the University community as a whole and the football program in particular, and “to be honest with you, I sit here a better man, a better father, a better husband, a better coach, because of what happened four years ago,” Elliott said. “I'm proud to be able to carry forward my weight of the burden. This is not a check list item for us. This is not about painting the field. This is who we are, and it's a part of our journey moving forward. There's tough days that we have to deal with as a result of it, but it's also a privilege to be able to carry forward the legacies of Lavel, Devin and D’Sean.”

Their jersey numbers are displayed prominently in the Hardie Center, where players, coaches and staffers see them daily.

“There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about those young men,” Elliott said. “There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about their families and pray for their families. I know how hard it's been for me. I can only imagine how difficult it is for their families, and I’m excited to have all three of the moms here this weekend.”

GROWING PAINS: Coming off one-sided wins over NC State and Norfolk State, Virginia headed to the Duke’s Mayo Classic in Charlotte, N.C., ranked No. 25 nationally. The Wahoos fell out of the rankings this week after losing 38-27 to West Virginia at Bank of America Stadium.

The Hoos had 13 won of their previous 16 games before Saturday night, and along the way they “created an expectation of winning,” Elliott said Tuesday.

“People are disappointed when you don't win. It's not ‘OK, on to the next one.’ I know for me, I didn't eat after the game, I didn't sleep much. I probably lost about six pounds. And I can see that agony in the folks around the building. And so there's an expectation. We've created that. Now, the problem is, we've got to feed that monster. We've got to keep it going. And the way that we do that is to take ownership. Don't make excuses. Tip your hat to your opponent for making the plays and then going back to work. And I saw that on Monday.”

UVA started well against West Virginia, but as the game went on breakdowns occurred in all three phases. Those mistakes can be corrected, Elliott said.

“I'm excited to go get better,” he said, “and I think the staff and the players are excited to go get better. And, man, it feels good to have an expectation to win and for everybody to be upset when we don't win. That tells us that we're definitely headed in the right direction, and Saturday can't get here fast enough. We're not going to skip any days. We're going to commit to the process, but it can't get here fast enough because nobody likes the feeling. But also, everybody has taken accountability for what we can do better.”

NO PANIC: In its second game last season, Virginia fell 35-31 at NC State after turning the ball over late in the game. It was a “brutal loss,” center Drake Metcalf recalled Tuesday, but the Cavaliers bounced back to win their next seven games.

Metcalf is confident this UVA team is similarly resilient.

“We've been here. We know that we've been here,” he said. “And if we're going to talk about adversity, no other team in America has faced adversity like this football team. Obviously, I got here after transferring in, in 2024, but the things that this team has gone through before that, with the tragedy in 2022, with the other events that have happened here since getting here, this team knows how to grow from adversity and how to become stronger and better from it ... We’ve been at rock bottom, we've had the worst of the worst happen here and we've grown from it and we've seen what we can do.”

The key for him, Elliott said, is to “make sure that we don't try and do too much and overcorrect. That’s the big challenge. When we watch the tape [of the WVU game] and you look at it, it's the little things. So staying focused on the little things, things that you preach all the time and the things that [UVA players] did that created the success that they had early.

“And now I think they have an understanding that it's always about the little things, and it doesn't matter who you're playing, you got to stay committed to those. And if you don't do them all the time, then there's going to be about five plays that could beat you. So I think their attention is captured right now.”

Going into the game, Elliott said, the Cavaliers recognized the explosiveness of WVU’s quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. To eat up the clock and keep the ball away from Hawkins, “we wanted to lean on the on the run,” Elliott said. “And when we were able to do that, I think, we were able to control the momentum and then when we had to play from behind, things were a little bit different.”

Hawkins rushed for three touchdowns and passed for two others Saturday. On defense, the Mountaineers sacked quarterback Beau Pribula three times and harassed him on numerous other plays. As frustrating as the experience might have been Saturday, the Hoos’ offense will be better for it, Elliott said.

“I think we're still growing and learning what this group can be,” he said. “I know one thing, I'm not panicking about the situation. It's one game, and it was a one-possession game in the fourth quarter, where we wanted to be. We gotta finish.”

When a quarterback gets hit repeatedly, Metcalf said, “he's gonna obviously be a little bit more hesitant and a little bit more tense in the backfield. So it's really on us as the offensive line to just make sure he never feels that way, make sure that he feels comfortable back there.”

For the season, Pribula has completed 42 of 58 passes (72.4%) for 514 yards and seven touchdowns. He’s been intercepted once.

When Pribula has had time in the pocket, Metcalf said, he’s made big plays. The challenge for the offensive line is “to make sure we get back to our fundamentals and make sure that he can do those things again,” Metcalf said, “because when we give him time, Beau is an excellent thrower and a passer in the backfield, and he's a special quarterback. So we need to get back to what we do best.”

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