Virginia gives Louisville scare, but mistakes were costly

By Jerry Ratcliffe

The sting of losing a hard-fought game was evident on Tony Elliott’s face when he walked into the post-game interview room on Saturday night.

For the second straight year, Virginia had dropped a winnable game against a favored Louisville team. UVA didn’t just lose the game, but the momentum of back-to-back wins.

“There’s a football team in there that’s hurting right now,” Elliott said about his locker room, “but I don’t think it’s a football team that’s lost confidence.”

Certainly that’s important going forward, because the 4-2 Cavaliers are halfway through the season, have only two more home games remaining, and in reality face a daunting, backloaded schedule looming ahead. Most likely, UVA will be favored against only one of six remaining opponents, four of which are nationally ranked.

“ACC games are one-possession games that go down to the fourth quarter and are going to be determined by four-to-six plays,” Elliott pointed out in his post-game. “Tip of the hat to Louisville. Man, they found a way. They made the plays at the end of the game.”

Louisville, a 7.5-point favorite, executed a textbook, 11-play, clock-eating drive to take a 24-20 lead with 1:55 to play and held on to pull out the win. Virginia made a last-gasp effort with quarterback Anthony Colandrea marching the Cavaliers from his own 25 to the Cardinals 39-yard line in only 42 seconds, completing four straight passes.

Louisville’s defense slammed the door as Colandrea’s next four throws were broken up or fell incomplete, delivering a brutal coup de grace, ending Virginia’s dream of improving to 5-1 for the first time since 2017.

For all of the Cavaliers’ brilliant accomplishments in the game, their undoing derived from bungled special teams plays and a bad decision by Elliott late in the first half.

That’s when the game was knotted at 7-all and Virginia had just marched from its own 25 to Louisville’s 6-yard line for a first down in an 18-play possession that ate up more than eight minutes. The Cavaliers managed to move the ball to the 3, where they faced a fourth-and-goal.

Instead of taking the sure-fire field goal and a 10-7 lead, Elliott rolled the dice and came up empty with an incomplete pass.

The momentum in the game shifted quickly in the third quarter when Louisville kicked a field goal for a 10-7 lead before two UVA special teams gaffes put the Cavaliers in a hole.

Jonas Sanker, who turned in another spectacular performance on defense (team-leading 11 tackles, a tackle for loss and a pass breakup), made a poor decision on returning a kickoff from 5 yards deep in the end zone and was nailed at the 14.

Only a few plays later, punter Daniel Sparks, attempting a moving, rugby-style kick, booted the ball squarely into the back of teammate Charlie Patterson, with Louisville recovering at the UVA 14. It took only one play for the Cards to build their lead when impressive freshman running back Isaac Brown (146 yards rushing, 2 TDs) took a toss left and was untouched on his jaunt to the end zone for a 17-7 advantage.

Sparks also had a 21-yard punt (he booted a 64-yarder later in the game), but the rugby-style kicks failed miserably.

“When you’re trying to rugby, you’re kicking a low-liner and it just didn’t get enough lift on it and it hit one of the shield guys in the back,” Elliott explained. “You want it to be a little bit higher, but you don’t want it to be up in the air. You kind of want to get it on the ground and it’ll bounce around, buy you a little bit of time.

“I know there’s going to be questions about why are we using that technique. Well, in Louisville last year, we basically lost by a touchdown and we gave up a blocked punt for a touchdown. Studying [Louisville], they do a great job of scheming up your protection. They’ve got speed guys, they overload your A-gaps, so the objective was to move the pocket and get the ball on the ground and keep it out of the hands of their dynamic returner. We just didn’t execute.”

Virginia also struggled in the red zone after its opening drive, going 75 yards and taking a quick 7-0 lead. It was the Cavaliers’ lone TD in four trips inside the red zone in the game.

“We just couldn’t finish this one … 1,000 percent you gotta score in the red zone,” said Colandrea, who played a poised, solid game (26 of 45, 279 yards, 84 yards rushing, no turnovers). “I would say it’s focusing. You’ve got to be locked in during the third and fourth quarter, especially in the red zone, you’ve got to be able to score.

“I have to be a better quarterback. I have to make the throws and I have to read the defense.”

Virginia now braces for a gauntlet of mostly intimidating opponents, starting next Saturday at top-10 Clemson, followed by a home game against struggling North Carolina, then a trip to No. 22 Pittsburgh, a road game at No. 11 Notre Dame, before returning home against No. 25 SMU, then closing at Virginia Tech where the Cavaliers haven’t won since 1998.

“You just saw a football team that’s persevering, regardless of any personnel issues that we have,” Elliott said after the loss. “Guys are stepping up. They believe. They’re fighting, they’re scrapping. Nobody gave them a shot to be in the game versus Louisville and they played their butts off.”