UVA-Duke notes and quotes

Courtesy UVA Media Relations

Team Notes

• Since 2017, Virginia is 24-6 at home and 15-2 at Scott Stadium since 2019. 
• Virginia is 9-3 in its last 12 games, tied for the best mark amongst ACC teams (NC State 7:30/Wake Forest (9-3) – Bye)
• Virginia has won seven-straight meetings against Duke and leads all-time series, 40-33.  
• UVA is 16-6 against the Blue Devils since 2000.
• Virginia is 49-45-2 all-time in homecomings games and has now won three-straight for the first time since 2007-09. 
• The Cavaliers scored 34 points in the first half, the most in an ACC game since 2004 against North Carolina.
• Virginia intercepted two passes, the first multi-interception game of the season and first since picking off five against Duke in the 2020 season opener. It was the first time this season that Duke had thrown multiple interceptions.
• The Virginia defense held Duke to 110 yards rushing. The Blue Devils came into the contest with the second-best rushing attack in the ACC, averaging 218 yards per game. It was Duke’s lowest rushing total of the season.
• Mataeo Durant, who ranked second in the ACC in rushing coming into the game accumulated 82 yards on the ground, only the second time this season he was held under 100 yards.
• The shutout was Virginia’s first in ACC play since 2008 when it blanked Maryland, 31-0.
• Virginia has shut out Duke nine times in the all-time series, most recently in 2006, a 37-0 win in Durham.
• The 48-point margin of victory was the highest in the Bronco Mendenhall era (2016-present). It was the sixth time since 2016 UVA has scored 48 or more points in a game.
• The 48-0 shutout was the largest in ACC play since defeating Miami, 48-0 in 2007.
• Virginia has two shutouts on the season (W&M, 43-0, Duke, 48-0). It marks the first time since 2008, UVA has two or more shutouts in the same season
• Virginia rushed for four touchdowns on the afternoon, the most this season and the most since running four in against Boston College last season.

Player Notes

• Quarterback Brennan Armstrong passed for 364 yards, all in three quarters of action. It marked the sixth time this season he has passed for 300 or more yards.
• Armstrong rushed for a season-high 34 yards and recorded his first rushing touchdown since the first week against William & Mary. His 25-yard rush on the opening drive was his second longest of the season.
• Armstrong went over the 5,000-yard passing mark for his career and moved into seventh place all-time on UVA’s career passing list with 5,199 yards. He surpassed Marques Hagans (4,877), Marc Verica (4,992) and Aaron Brooks (5,118) in Saturday’s game.
• Armstrong has amassed 5,922 yards of total offense in his career, the sixth-most in program history.
• Wide receiver Billy Kemp IV caught six passes for 65 yards, his 22nd straight game with a reception. He took over sole possession of sixth place all-time on UVA’s career reception list (150 receptions), passing Heath Miller (144 receptions). 
• Wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks led UVA with seven catches and 125 yards and a touchdown. The 100-yard receiving game was Wicks’ third of the season. He has a reception in all seven games this season.
• Specialist Brendan Farrell was a perfect 2-for-2 on field goals (31, 34) and was 5-for-5 on extra points. He is 6-for-6 this season on field goals from 43 yards and in.
• Freshman Malachi Fields made his first career start and caught one pass for 19 yards.
• Devin Darrington and Ronnie Walker Jr. each ran for second half scores. The seven-yard touchdown for Darrington was his first at UVA.
• Keytaon Thompson’s 1-yard rushing touchdown in the second quarter made it 17-0. It was his team-leading, third rushing touchdown of the season.
• Linebacker Nick Jackson made a game-high 11 tackles, the fourth time this season he has registered double-digit tackles. He also recorded a sack and a career-high four tackles for loss.
• Joey Blount recorded his seventh career interception and made four tackles (three solo).
• De’Vante Cross intercepted a second quarter pass that setup Farrell’s 34-yard field goal. He has six career interceptions.

Duke Coach/Player quotes

Head Coach David Cutcliffe

Opening Statement:

“When you have circumstances at any time, football or life that occur like this, it obviously becomes somewhat of a gut-check. Without doubt, I think that’s how I would describe it. But when you hit these times, I will simply tell you that, in our program, we have all run through these times, we have seen them. Also, we’re all accountable. Every one of us. we own this; every one of us. The more you grasp ownership, the more you realize after as you study something. We will take our time, we’ll be patient with this. None of us individually have all the answers. We’re gonna hear a lot of people with a lot of answers and it’s just not that easy. We’ll all be owners of every part of this, we’ll all work at this together. And there’s a lot of things that seem to be outliers today. I thought we had better matchup in both lines of scrimmage and that didn’t hold true and when you’re losing there on both sides it’s very difficult. It’s difficult to defend the pass downfield when there’s not a pass rush. And when we can’t knock people off the line and run the ball, it’s difficult to play offense. I can go about a million reasons of here we go but that’s not the approach. The approach is finding a way to get better, and the approach is again owning it which starts with me. Every one of us are tough-minded enough and have enough character to take this on. That’s where it all lies.”

On accountability after a big loss:

“I mean obviously everybody’s disappointed, maybe to the point of somewhat devastated right after that kind of loss. It’s hard. These are the times you start wondering if the sun’s gonna rise, but it does. And that’s why I told them; we’re not going to be in any big hurry. It’s not a rah-rah answer. It’s an answer that you dig deep inside yourself as to what you have to assess with what you’re doing. We all have parts in this that we have to assess and assess what we’re doing collectively. Again, it goes back to all of us owning it. I don’t see a negative attitude; I don’t see or feel any give-up in this team. Everything gets harder when you lose three in a row. And we have to avoid, as I said, locker room lawyers. We have to avoid coaches thinking they’ve got all the answers, players thinking they’ve got all that, anybody. We have to learn that we, together, have to accomplish what we’ve got to accomplish to get back on a winning track. This team’s capable of winning and we have to believe that first and then we have to move towards it.”

On the disappointing end to the first drive:

“Well, that’s if at first the game breaks against you then don’t let up, put on more steam. For me to sit here and tell you that doesn’t hit you hard, absolutely it does. It hits you hard. And when we go back to the question about pressing when you’ve lost three games or two games in a row you really have to work hard at saying “here we go again”. You know life will have patterns, football will have patterns like that and it’s up to us to break them. If you don’t break the cycle who’s going to? So, we’re going to call on some mental toughness and we’ll talk about this as a team. There’s no magic formula for this. We just have to be mentally tough enough to handle all of these circumstances we’ve been dealt with, knowing in the long run we’re going to be better because of it. We’re not interested in a cycle of negativity. We’re interested in breaking the cycle or anything that we think we need to by being strong individuals and a strong team.

On the exchange with Coach Mendenhall at the conclusion of the game :

“We’re just friends and we have known each other a long, long time. I wished him well and he wished us well. That’s about it. We had a good talk before the game too, but there was nothing there that was a concern for me or a doubt for him.”

Duke QB Gunnar Holmberg

On what went wrong offensively:

“I think a lot of it starts off with not having penalties when we’re in the middle of a good drive. I was thinking that first first down whenever you’re on the field goes a long way. When you have three and outs it’s tough on the defense and tough on us to really get any type of rhythm for the game. I don’t think we were great at that. Being good on first and second down to kind of get going was something that I don’t really think we did a great job of and we put ourselves in tough third down situations. Taking care of the football, I had two interceptions and those are things where you always want to keep the ball in your hands especially against another team that has a talented offense. I think that’s really what it comes down to.”

On responding poorly to adversity of the first possession:

“Yeah, I mean I think we walked away from that possession knowing we have to finish but, I think just knowing if we don’t hurt ourselves that we’re able to move the ball. It’s something that we knew coming into this game that we, as an offense, can do against anybody but no, I wouldn’t say that as a team we just hung our hats after that or felt defeated. I mean, just knowing that we’ve got to put it in next time. Unfortunately, I don’t think we really had another drive that was that long, but I think guys continue to compete we’ve just got to put it together better and more consistently on offense.”

On pressure as the score gap increases:

“I think you’ve got to just continue to take it one play at a time and then one drive at a time. You can’t score twenty points in one possession, so you’ve just got to kind of stick to what you do. Like I said, just take it one play at a time because if you start thinking about it too much that’s kind of when you try to force things and then the game kind of starts really slipping from your fingers.”

On how to get things turned around heading into a bye week:

“I think I think it’ll be good for guys to kind of just like let their bodies rest. We kind of get back to 100% throughout the week. When you’re in the middle of a three-game losing streak, I think it’s kind of good to let your mind reset a little bit. Throughout the bye week, you try and focus on the little things that you do to make yourself just a little bit better of a football player. It kind of lets you focus on the basics again, and to slow down and look at what we’re doing and things we need to do better. Whether that’s, you know, schematically, or just kind of how we’re going about practice. It gives us time to do that and not you know, be in full press mode trying to be fully prepared by Saturday. I think guys are going to take the bye week seriously. We know the coaches are going to put us in a good position and we’re going to try and learn as much as we possibly can from it and I think that’s what it’s going to come down to.”