UVA football coach Bronco Mendenhall is preparing for Saturday as if the game with Louisville is on.
“I haven’t had any communication directly but, Dr. (John) MacKnight has, the conference office has, Kelly Pugh, our trainer, has. Our athletic director, Carla Williams, has. There’s really been nothing between Scott (Satterfield, the Louisville coach) and myself, nor does there really need to be. But at the other levels, there have been the exchanges, and so the game at this point is on, as if it was just a regular ACC game,” Mendenhall said on Monday.
The teams had been scheduled to play this past weekend, but the game had to be moved back a week as Louisville dealt with a mini-outbreak – with 10 players and five staff members testing positive, and an additional seven (five players, two staff) forced into quarantine because of contact tracing.
Louisville was able to hold its first practice since the beginning of the outbreak on Sunday.
“We waited until we got the results back before we even met with our guys,” Satterfield said in his weekly Monday presser. “When we first had our meeting, our guys were kind of looking around saying, What are we doing? Once we got into it and started to practice, I thought guys were flying around, and we had a very productive practice. We were excited about getting back out onto the field.”
Satterfield told reporters that the team didn’t have any additional COVID-19 positives in testing conducted on Friday and Sunday, obviously a significant development in terms of this weekend’s scheduled game.
The early line has Virginia listed as a three-point favorite.
The Cavaliers will be looking to build on the momentum from their 44-41 upset of then-#15 North Carolina back on Oct. 31.
That win snapped a four-game losing skid that was the program’s longest in three years.
Mendenhall said his team took the unexpected bye week for what it was.
“I think it ended up working out well, even though it wasn’t a full break,” Mendenhall said. “It was a partial break. They’ve been going for a long time, so it was a nice just alteration in the routine. We’ll begin again this evening with meetings, and then we’ll start practice tomorrow as it would be a regular game week. I’m anxious to move forward.”
Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
