Virginia, last week, up 27-13 in the fourth on Duke, faced another learning moment.
Jaquez Moore broke a couple of half-effort tackles in the backfield, escaped a rugby scrum at the line of scrimmage, and bolted down the left sideline for a 58-yard touchdown.
What was starting to feel like a game that was in the bag for Virginia was now 27-20 with nine minutes left.
Virginia had faced this exact situation a couple of times before in the 2023 season.
There was the 35-24 lead with nine minutes to go on JMU in Week 2 that turned into a 36-35 loss.
JMU doesn’t host “College GameDay” and waste taxpayer dollars with the attorney general putting staff time to a possible lawsuit against the NCAA over bowl invites if not for that collapse.
Then there was the first-and-10 from the Louisville 15, 8:52 to go, UVA up on the Cardinals, 21-17, in Week 11.
Punch it in, it’s a two-score game, and we might be on the way to a massive, scene-changing upset.
The drive stalled, though, and while Will Bettridge was good from 38 on the field-goal try, the door was left open, and Louisville rallied through it for the 31-24 win.
Louisville is 10-1, has clinched a berth in the ACC Championship Game, and is on the fringe of the discussion regarding the College Football Playoff.
Not so, if Virginia can take care of business.
So, been here before.
Eventually, you learn.
Eventually came this past Saturday.
True freshman QB Anthony Colandrea led Virginia on a clock-churning 14-play, 62-yard drive that forced Duke to burn its three timeouts, took more than five minutes off the ticker, and the Bettridge field goal that capped it off made it a two-score game, 30-20, with 3:43 left.
Duke would go on to score a late TD, but because of the clock and the burned timeouts, all that was left after was an onside kick attempt, and once Virginia recovered the ball on the kick, it was all over.
It’s one small step in the sense of it being one win for a team that is now 3-8, but a giant leap for a program that had shown that it can compete, and now appears ready to take on more.
“I believe that the next step is after you learn how to compete, you learn how to win,” Virginia coach Tony Elliott said this week, as his team began its preparations for Saturday’s season finale with in-state rival Virginia Tech.
“In some of those close games, we didn’t make the plays we needed to make,” Elliott said. “That is the next step in saying, OK, we’re not going to wait on somebody else not to make a play. We’re going to have the confidence and the belief that we’re going to be the ones to make the play to win the game.”
Elliott is 6-15 at Virginia with one game left in Year 2, but his ‘Hoos are 3-3 in their last six games, with an OT loss at Miami and the come-from-ahead loss at Top 10 Louisville, and even back during the 0-5 start to 2023, there was the one-point loss to a JMU team that has been ranked most of the season, and a walk-off field-goal loss to an NC State team that is 22nd in this week’s CFP rankings.
All the issues this program has had to face over the past 12 months, and it wouldn’t take much for Elliott to have his team either playing for a bowl invite on Saturday, or already in.
Elliott said he’s not a “big moral-victory guy,” but the message to the fan base is, “we’re making the progress.”
“You would like for it to happen faster, there is no question, in terms of the results. But really, really proud of this group of individuals, staff and players, for their resilience amidst just normal adversity that comes with the football season, and then the things that were tacked on as a result of what happened at the end of last year,” Elliott said.
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Chris Graham
