UVA Football: How much can we glean from the ‘Hoos 34-17 win at Duke? Probably not much

You only very rarely get in-season rematches in college football, so the old saw from other sports about how it’s hard to beat a good team twice in one season doesn’t get thrown around a lot in the CFB world.

Now that I’m having to put my thinking to it, though, it seems to me that the advantage here isn’t with the team that won the first game.

Virginia thoroughly dominated Duke two weeks ago, winning 34-17, and it wasn’t that close – the ‘Hoos led 31-3 in the fourth quarter, and was never in peril.

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ICYMI

• UVA Football: Morris, Taylor, D key ‘Hoos to convincing 34-17 win at Duke
• UVA Football: ‘Hoos dominate in all phases in pivotal 34-17 win at Duke
• Greg’s Grades: How UVA Football graded out in its Week 12 win at Duke

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First instinct would be to look at the situation and say, OK, UVA took the Dookies to the woodshed, they should be able to do it again.

My thinking is: the coaching staff at Duke, beaten thoroughly in every phase, will obviously adjust, probably dramatically, the approach in terms of game-planning and then also play-calling in all three phases, rendering a lot of what we know from 34-17 on Nov. 15 useless.

“You got to throw out what you did in the previous game, to be honest with you,” Virginia coach Tony Elliott told reporters on a Sunday teleconference, not so much agreeing with me – he’s forgotten more about the game of football than I’ll know if I live to be a hundred – as just confirming for me that I’m not totally useless here.

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ICYMI

• UVA Football: The Virginia defense made Darian Mensah look average

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Virginia outgained Duke 540-255 in the win in Durham last month; Duke QB Darius Mensah finished with 213 yards and a TD through the air, but the bulk of that was in garbage time.

In the first half, Mensah was 5-of-11 for 26 yards through the air.

He was sacked four times, and pressured on 18 of his 42 dropbacks.

Duke gained 66 yards on the ground (sack-adjusted), averaging 3.5 yards per attempt.

“We haven’t had a chance yet to re-game plan, you know, for Virginia and, of course, and I told the staff this, you know, they reserve the right to make adjustments against us as well,” Duke coach Manny Diaz told reporters on the conference call. “This is, you know, the unusual thing in college, you know, they get in the pros all the time of rematches, you don’t see it in college as much. So, yeah, certainly, there will be some things that, you know, on the chalkboard, you know, that both teams will want to hone in on. I think the big thing with our guys is, just play better. I just felt like that game, in some ways, again, like I said, Virginia had a lot to do with it. I just feel like we played poorly that night. And so, we’ll just be looking to try to present a much better version of ourselves than we did on that occasion.”

Elliott pointed to the improvements that we’ve seen out of Duke since the loss to Virginia on Nov. 15 – putting up 32 points and 352 yards in a win over North Carolina on Nov. 22, and 49 points and 378 yards in a win over Wake Forest this past weekend.

The Duke defense got touched up a bit in the 49-32 win over Wake, surrendering 468 yards – but the D also forced four turnovers.

“This game is going to come down to execution, and I’m sure that we’re going to get Duke’s best effort,” Elliott said. “Since our game, you see that they’ve gotten back into rhythm offensively, been able to score a bunch of points, so, just super, super excited about the opportunity, but the experience that I’ll share with the team is, it doesn’t matter, you got to go win this game, you got to play your best four quarters, got to have the best week of preparation. If that gives me any leg up, I’m gonna try and use it, but to be honest with you, I don’t think it really matters. They’re gonna play their best.”