Olamide Zaccheaus and Chris Peace were first-graders. Bronco Mendenhall was in his first year as defensive coordinator at BYU. It’s been that long since UVA beat Virginia Tech in a football game.
That, and Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram hadn’t yet come online.
No surprise, then, that a focal point for UVA football is catching up to its in-state rival, which has won 14 straight and 18 of the last 19 in the series.
“Personally, I want to be first-team All-ACC and an All-American, and I feel like I’ve been putting in the work to do that. And as a team our goal is to beat Virginia Tech, and not only go to a bowl game this year, but win one as well,” said Zaccheaus, talking with reporters at the 2018 ACC Kickoff in Charlotte on Wednesday.
The 5’8”, 190-pound senior caught a school-record 85 balls and put up 1,177 yards from scrimmage in 2017, meaning the All-ACC and All-American goals are not out of reach.
The win over Tech, though, that one could be a tall order, with this year’s installment in the series playing in Blacksburg, again on Black Friday.
The Hokies are coming off a 9-4 season after putting up 10 wins in Justin Fuente’s first season at the helm, and are expected to contend again in the Coastal Division.
UVA is not expected to contend in Mendenhall’s third season in Charlottesville, as the rebuild slogs on.
The ‘Hoos, to the credit of Mendenhall and his staff, did get back to the postseason in 2017, getting to six wins with a November win at home over Georgia Tech, but a late-season slide, with six losses in UVA’s final seven games, made it feel like there was some unfinished business to the campaign.
“Just because we were doing well, we were 5-1 at one point, we can’t let off the brakes or the gas,” Zaccheaus said. “We have to keep pushing, keep striving to find ways to get better. And I feel like when we got to that point in the year, we got complacent, and you could see it in our play, especially the following week against Boston College. Just through accomplishment and adversity, we need to push through and hold ourselves to a higher standard.”
You hear those words a lot around the UVA program – higher standard, new standard.
Peace, who had 7.5 sacks, 10.5 tackles for loss, an interception and two forced fumbles as a disruptive force at linebacker in 2017, said a key part of the new standard with UVA football is “to know we have to beat Virginia Tech to make that next jump forward in our program.”
Mendenhall has been vocal about Virginia Tech being an important measuring stick for his program.
“Certainly when you have a rivalry game that you haven’t won in a significant amount of time, that’s one of the things that has to happen, regardless of where you are, and so we’re open about it more so now that I’ve ever been, just because it’s clear that has to happen for University of Virginia’s football program,” Mendenhall said.
It’s a truism in life that the one way to guarantee that you won’t do something is to think you can’t do it. Mendenhall is trying to adjust the thinking in that respect with his players.
“That’s part of the new standard that Chris talks about, is those are expectations,” Mendenhall said. “Those aren’t things that we expect randomly or occasionally. We want a program that does those things consistently, and that’s part of the direction we’re moving toward. Still work to do, no question, but that’s the direction we’re moving.”
Column by Chris Graham
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