I’ve been writing a lot this season about how a football team needs to work on, in addition to conditioning, technique, learning the playbook, also learning how to win.
Tony Elliott, in Year 2 at Virginia, is still trying to teach his team that last, most important, lesson.
“At the end of the day, they made one more play than we did, and, you know, I gotta do a better job of having my guys ready in that moment to make the play,” Elliott told reporters after his team’s 29-26 overtime loss at Miami on Saturday.
That one was the fourth loss for the Cavaliers of three points or fewer in 2023.
Virginia had a double-digit lead in three of those four, and also in what turned into a 42-14 loss at Maryland last month; the score there masks how close that one was because the Terps blew things open with a big fourth quarter aided by three Virginia turnovers.
You wanted to think that last week’s 31-27 win at unbeaten and 10th-ranked North Carolina might have been the aha! moment for Elliott’s group, but this one with Miami played out like the earlier losses to JMU and Boston College, in which the ‘Hoos dominated for long stretches, but just couldn’t make the plays when they needed to.
There was the third quarter picksix on a Tony Muskett pass, for instance, in which it appeared that wideout JR Wilson sort of alligator-armed his effort on the pass into tight coverage.
There’s seven points, and then another three came on an apparent INT at the UVA 5 on a second-down Tyler Van Dyke pass in the fourth quarter that Coen King was just not able to corral.
Andres Borregales connected on a 50-yard field goal two plays later, so, there’s another three points.
Just right there, two plays, 10 ‘Canes points, in a game that would end up going to OT, despite Virginia dominating statistically – outgaining Miami by 101 yards, running 27 more plays, winning the turnover battle.
“I think we’ve learned a lot over the course of the season. We still got a ways to go, but really, really proud of the guys, that we played clean football, didn’t have any penalties, you know, no penalties, and, you know, we ran the ball effectively, you know, we just, you know, we didn’t make the play at the end,” Elliott said.
“We gave up too many negative plays, in particular with the sacks that got us behind the chains. I thought when we were efficient and effective on first down, we were able to play with a little bit of tempo and kind of keep them off-balance. But at the end of the day, you’re measured by winning and losing, and we didn’t make the play at the end to win again.”
It’s back to the drawing board for Elliott and his program, with Georgia Tech, fresh off its own upset of North Carolina, a 46-42 come-from-behind win last night in Atlanta, coming to town.
Just based off how both UVA and Tech played UNC and Miami – the Jackets beat UM, 23-20, earlier this month – it should be another tight game this coming Saturday.
“We still got four games left, and one thing about me is, I’m not gonna stop believing, right,” Elliott said. “That’s what faith is. You know, faith is the hope of things to come and the evidence of things unseen, alright, so there’s four games left, and we go and battle. We will take it one game at a time, one day at a time. But I know one thing about me, I’m not, I’m not quitting, and the sense that I get with that football team and there’s no, they’re not quitting either, man. They want to, you know, they want to taste that, that taste of victory, and they’re gonna, man, they’re gonna work their tails off, and they got a lot to play for still this season.”
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Chris Graham
