You knew I was going to write about the weather delay in last night’s UVA Football home opener, didn’t you?
Last year’s home opener, you may remember, was going well for Virginia, which was leading JMU, 35-24, in the fourth quarter, when the game was delayed for an hour and ten minutes by a passing thunderstorm.
The UVA fans on hand, largely, headed home, and the JMU fans who hung around, though not many in number, made up for that with their intensity, and their noise actually forced the Virginia offense into two (!) false-start penalties.
ICYMI
This was on a possession in between back-to-back JMU TD drives that keyed the Dukes to the 36-35 win.
After the game, UVA coach Tony Elliott said something about what was going on in his locker room during the delay that I then wrote about, and which got me hate mail, and more.
“That’s a challenging situation to manage because you don’t know how long it is. You’re trying to get the guys refueled and rested. You want them to stay locked in, so you’re trying to keep them off their phones and keep them focused,” Elliott actually said, giving away more than he wanted to.
So, I did what a reporter does, wrote about what the coach gave as the explanation for what had happened, and the guy who would be hired after the season to take over as the color analyst on the school’s radio broadcasts, Ahmad Hawkins, decided to make the story about me, and whipped up an interwebs army to take me down, with one guy even threatening to drive by my house, you know, because that’s what normal people do in this day and age.
I don’t know who’s happier that Virginia, faced with another weather delay last night in the 2024 season opener, with a 20-7 lead on Richmond when the stadium was cleared because of lightning in the area, went on to a big win.
ICYMI
OK, it’s Elliott, his team, UVA fans across the globe.
But I’m pretty damn happy, too, because I’d have had to have written about another weather-related collapse.
The way the world works, somebody still probably threatens me for writing this story, just because.
“We learned a lot from last year,” Elliott said after the 34-13 win, which the Cavaliers punctuated coming out of the locker room after the two-plus-hour delay, scoring a touchdown on a quick four-play, 54-yard drive to extend the 13-point lead to 20.
Phones weren’t an issue this time around.
Food, on the other hand …
“Really want to shout out our ops folks and admin, and man, (deputy athletics director) Steve Pritzker was running around bringing concessions from the concession stand to make sure that our guys had something to eat,” Elliott said, confirming a conversation that a few of us had in the press box during the long break, namely, the guys had to be getting hungry, right?
“That was something that we learned from the last because, again, we had pregame meal about four hours before competition. So, when you add that two-hour delay, it had been a long time since our guys ate. So, I thought, just, everybody pitched in, our ops folks, admin, everybody was trying to make sure these guys were fed,” Elliott said.
Among the items on the players’ dining list: a lot of barbecue, though somehow, tailback Kobe Pace was able to get access to two PB&J sandwiches.
I need to find that concession stand in Week 3.
Sixth-year defensive back Antonio Clary described the mood in the locker room during the break as being focused.
“Coach came into the locker room during that delay and was just like, What team do we want to be in 2024, you know, because last time we were in this situation, it didn’t end the way we wanted it to end,” said Clary, who, playing in his first game in two years, had a team-best eight tackles.
“It was just all about mentality, mindset,” Clary said. “You know, just, Coach talks about competitive stamina all the time, just, you know, playing to a standard no matter the situation. So, you know, we really took that to heart as a team.”
Elliott was happy with the way his team handled what Mother Nature had to bring to bear for his team this time around.
“Many times you don’t get a shot at redemption, you know,” Elliott said. “I think about, you know, last year on UVA Strong Day, we had a similar situation, and we didn’t finish. Really proud of the staff and the guys for finding a way to finish tonight.”
For me, I’m glad I get a shot to write this story of redemption, so, there’s that.
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Chris Graham
