By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — To knock off No. 14 Wake Forest, Virginia needed to play inspired football Saturday. The opposite happened at Allegacy Stadium. The Cavaliers struggled in all three phases and lost 51-7 to the Demon Deacons.
Wake scored on each of its first nine possessions and punted only once, with 2:00 left in the game. The Demon Deacons, who led 20-0 at halftime, finished with 538 yards on offense, to 330 for the Wahoos.
The Deacons are 7-1 overall and 5-1 in the ACC, and their lone loss was to top-ranked Miami.
“They’ve been playing with a ton of energy all season,” UVA head coach Tony Elliott said, “and I think when there were some competitive plays that we weren't able to make early, it just allowed the momentum to pick up. And then from there, it was just hard to change the momentum back in our favor.”
Also, Elliott said, “we had some situations where we needed a play. We had a couple of fourth-down situations where we needed a play, and we didn't make the play. I think when you give a good football team some opportunity and then you don't make a play to keep a drive alive or score points, then it just adds to the momentum and the energy that they have.”
On special teams, Virginia gave up two long punt returns, both by Kam Shanks. The first went for 30 yards and the second for 64, and each led to a Wake touchdown.
For UVA (4-5, 2-4), the defeat was its third straight and fourth in five games. The Cavaliers’ only points came in the final minute of the third quarter. Quarterback Beau Pribula teamed with wide receiver Da’Shawn Martin on a pass play that went for a 47-yard touchdown, and Will Bettridge’s extra point made it 44-7.
Martin, who’s in his first year at Virginia, is a transfer from Kent State. He finished with nine catches for 119 yards, both career highs.
“I thought he came up with some big plays for us,” Elliott said. “He was going up over the middle, coming down with catches, taking hits, and kind of limping off the field, and then going right back out there.”
A year ago, in Chapel Hill, UVA defeated a North Carolina team whose quarterback was Gio Lopez. He’s now at Wake Forest, and the Hoos had no answers for him Saturday.
Lopez, who rushed 13 times for 64 yards, completed 13 of 21 passes for 229 yards and one TD. His favorite target was wideout Carlos Hernandez, who caught eight passes for 136 yards and one TD.
“They did a really good job,” said linebacker Maddox Marcellus, one of Virginia’s captains. “Gio Lopez is a very good ball player; [Hernandez], really good ball player. They had a good scheme coming in, and we just didn't execute tonight. Didn't do what we practiced all week. When stuff got hard, we needed to do better at coming together and not hanging our heads.”
Wake was 9 for 14 on third-down conversions and 1 for 1 on fourth down. UVA, by contrast, was 1 for 12 on third down and 3 for 7 on fourth. This was the fourth time in the past five games that Virginia has scored fewer than 17 points.
“I feel like we move ball consistently,” Martin said. “We’ve just got to score.”
The Deacons led 17-0 late in the second quarter when the Hoos reached the red zone for the first time, and a 6-yard completion from Pribula to Martin brought up fourth-and-1 from the 6. UVA has thrived on direct snaps to tailbacks since the start of last season, but not this time. Wake stopped Xay Davis for no gain.
“Obviously a huge, huge play. Pivotal,” Pribula said. “It’s swing plays like that in a game that get you.”
Pribula, a transfer from Missouri, completed 20 of 29 passes for 212 yards and one TD. He was intercepted once.
With 9:04 remaining, Eli Holstein took over at quarterback for the Cavaliers. A transfer from Pittsburgh who, like Pribula, is in his first year at Virginia, Holstein was 12-for-16 passing for 102 yards.
“I thought both of the guys threw the ball well tonight,” Elliott said, “and I think they were prepared and they did their job for the most part. What we’ve got to do is, we’ve got to coach better to help the supporting cast be able to kind of bring it all together from that standpoint, so it's not all on the shoulders of one man.”
Virginia doesn’t play again until Nov. 14. Asked about the quarterbacks, Elliott said that “everything is going to be evaluated these next two weeks as we go forward to try and put together the best opportunity to be able to win a football game down the stretch.”
The Cavaliers limped into Winston-Salem and then lost three more players to injuries during the game: linebacker Landon Danley, tight end John Rogers and center Drake Metcalf. They joined the long list of UVA players who were unavailable Saturday, including wide receivers Rico Flores Jr. and Kameron Courtney, tailbacks Jekail Middlebrook and Noah Vaughn, defensive tackle Jason Hammond, defensive end Devon Baxter, linebacker Caleb Hardy and defensive backs Omillio Agard, Brandyn Hillman, Ethan Minter, Corey Costner and Keke Adams.
Middlebrook rushed for a career-best 117 yards last weekend against Duke and has been UVA’s top running back this season. Without him, Virginia netted only 16 yards on 19 carries Saturday, but Elliott said those numbers didn’t tell the whole story.
“I think it was more just you're chasing touchdowns versus this team and you need chunk plays,” Elliot said, “and nobody's been able to generate the chunk plays in the run game. I think the plan was to lean more on the run tonight, so to speak, and then maybe figure out the passing game [based on] what they were going to give us. But once we were down three scores, we're chasing points. And, hell, you want to run the ball. But if you're going three yards in a cloud of dust, you better be able to stay on the field, or else you're going to be chasing even more points. So it was more so the complexion of the game than the loss, per se, of Jekail.”
UP NEXT: Three regular-season games remain for Virginia: two at home and one on the road. The Cavaliers, off next weekend, host Cal at Scott Stadium on Nov. 14 and play North Carolina there on Nov. 21.
UVA closes the regular season Nov. 28 against Virginia Tech at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg. Virginia needs to win two of the three to become bowl-eligible.
“I don’t think anybody in that locker room at the beginning of the season thought that we'd be in this situation,” Elliott said, “but we are. The choices that we've made have gotten us to where we are. And so then what's going to get us out are the choices we make going forward.”
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