The final score felt comfortable, a four-touchdown win for Virginia at the end of the day.
But it was 14-10 Liberty midway through the second quarter, the Flames scoring on back-to-back possessions after falling behind 10-0 early, and now Liberty was driving.
An 11-yard pass from Stephen Calvert to Antonio Gandy-Golden gave the Flames a first down at the UVA 38.
Liberty tried to run a run-pass option play, but the UVA D wasn’t fooled, and got pressure on Calvert, who tried to get rid of the ball.
But he was hit as he released the ball, and the pass was basically an infield fly to ‘Hoos safety De’Vante Cross, who caught the ball at the 6 and returned it into Liberty territory.
“To be honest with you, I have no idea what happened,” Cross said after the game. “I saw the ball in the air, and it was high up there, so I first looked around to see if there was anyone out there. There wasn’t, so I just thought wow he really threw it out here as a freebee so I just took advantage of it.”
The interception was the pivot for a Virginia team that would go on to win 55-27.
And it was very much out of character for Calvert, a senior, who hadn’t been intercepted since Liberty’s Week 1 loss to Syracuse, a span of 295 passes between picks.
“The ball should never go deep to the middle of the field,” Liberty coach Hugh Freeze said. “He knows that, and he is beating himself up, but that was frustrating. It seemed like it carried over to the second half.”
Freeze was talking about the mood of his team, but it was just as much confidence on the part of the Virginia defense, which forced Calvert into a 16-for-40 day with two INTs.
He did eventually throw for 283 yards, but 112 of those came in the fourth quarter in what was essentially garbage time.
And the Cavaliers did a great job defending Liberty wideout Antonio Gandy-Golden, holding the Biletnikoff Award semifinalist to six catches on 15 targets for 60 yards.
The bulk of the work on Gandy-Golden was put in by Heskin Smith, a sophomore corner who had missed six weeks to a knee injury that required before being cleared to play for Georgia Tech back in Week 11.
With a bye week to get his feet back under him, the 5’11” Smith was left alone with the 6’4” Gandy-Golden on the edge and more than held his own.
The performance is more impressive when you learn that he didn’t know until Tuesday that he would figure so prominently in the defensive game plan.
“Ever since I came back, I’ve been working my tail off and working hard,” Smith said after the game, in which he led his team in tackles with eight and also recorded two pass breakups. “I’ve been getting in the film room and getting with my teammates and coaches and really trying to gain planning and more confidence so I can be a student of the game out there when I play.”
One other big play involving a key UVA defender actually happened on the other side of the ball.
Linebacker Charles Snowden, part of the team’s punting unit, caught a 24-yard pass from backup quarterback Brennan Armstrong, who snuck into the game as an up man, to convert a fourth down on a drive that ended with a UVA TD that pushed the Cavalier lead to 31-14.
“We went over it throughout the bye week, and it worked in practice. Coach felt confident enough to call it, and it worked in the game,” Snowden said.
Story by Chris Graham