The UVA Football team doesn’t have to be reminded that Richmond, an FCS playoff team a year ago, is not going to roll over in Saturday’s season opener.
But just in case, consider NC State, a preseason pick to be a sleeper in the ACC title race, which had a three-point fourth-quarter lead on Western Carolina before pulling away late to win on Thursday night, 38-21.
Out in Boulder, Colorado, with an ESPN audience tuning in because Deion Sanders is the coach, had to survive a last-second Hail Mary that a North Dakota State receiver caught at the Colorado 4 to escape with a 31-26 win, also on Thursday.
And then there’s former UVA Football coach Bronco Mendenhall, in his debut at New Mexico, lost to Montana State in a Week Zero game, 35-31.
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Richmond, like Western Carolina, like North Dakota State, like Montana State, isn’t coming in just to get a paycheck to fund the football program for the rest of the season.
“My assessment is, we’ve got a really, really good football team coming in here that is not going to believe the hype that an FCS team is not supposed to beat a (Power 4) team,” UVA coach Tony Elliott said in his Tuesday weekly press conference. “They’re going to come here expecting to win. They’re going to be very well-coached, and they’re going to battle for four quarters. We’ve got to play our best football right out the gate, because this is a very capable, experienced football team that’s very well-coached, and they’re not going to back down.”
Richmond head coach Russ Huesman has two QBs who got a lot of snaps in 2023 – redshirt junior Kyle Wickersham (1,405 yards, 72.6 percent completion rate, 10 TDs/4 INTs in 2023) and sophomore Camden Coleman (1,161 yards, 66.7 percent completion rate, 12 TDs/6 INTs in 2023).
Huesman, talking with the media on Monday, declined to say who he was going with as his starter.
Wickersham is the guy more likely to move the chains with his feet (402 net yards rushing in 2023), so he’s probably the one to worry about more, particularly with Richmond needing to find a new RB1 with the loss of Savon Smith (708 yards, 4 TDs on the ground in 2023) to graduation.
The most promising back on the roster is probably Wagner transfer Zach Palmer-Smith (699 yards as a sophomore at Wagner in 2023).
The Spiders’ leading receiver from a year ago is back, in 6’1”, 190-pound redshirt senior Nick DeGennaro (71 catches, 904 yards, 11 TDs in 2023).
Richmond ranked in the upper quartile in FCS in team defense in 2023, allowing 338.5 yards per game, ranking 19th among the 122 teams in FCS in rushing defense (112.7 yards per game).
In short, the Spiders won’t be a pushover for a UVA program that under Tony Elliott is 2-0 against FCS competition, including a 34-17 win over Richmond back in 2022, but his Cavaliers haven’t exactly knocked the socks off the teams from a level down.
Preview: UVA vs. Richmond
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Chris Graham
