Scattershooting: Football’s around the corner, pressure is on for Elliott; plus Golden Nuggets

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Scattershooting on a Saturday morning with football slowly creeping up on us, UVA practice begins in 12 days …

Focus will immediately turn to Tony Elliott in his fourth season on the job. Elliott, who is a good guy, has struggled to win in the first three years. Virginia’s 11 wins over that span is the lowest total of any Power 4 coach in the conference.

Certainly it’s bowl or bust for Elliott and his staff, and the potential is definitely there to win six games. The Cavaliers have the easiest schedule of any ACC team and have seven home games, which should offer some advantage, although the Scott Stadium homefield edge ain’t what it used to be.

Other than the schedule — UVA does not face Clemson, Miami or SMU, three of the top four teams in the conference — Elliott has some things going for him, namely 31 new players from the transfer portal. It’s a top-25 (nationally) transfer class, and for the first time in a long, long time, Virginia appears to have playable depth at every position.

Elliott mentioned late last season that one of the differences he had noticed when comparing his program to rival Virginia Tech is that the Hokies had more depth. That should no longer be the case.

So will Virginia qualify for a bowl? It should, but there’s a handful of 50-50 games the Cavaliers are going to have to win their share of in order to do so. One of the huge games on the schedule is a road trip to NC State for a nonconference game on the second week of the season.

The Wolfpack are coming off a disappointing season, including a bowl loss to rival East Carolina. Still, State is tough to beat in Raleigh.

A win could help UVA to a 3-0 start (Coastal Carolina, William & Mary) and set things up nicely for Florida State coming to town. FSU was one of the most disappointing teams in the nation last season, but expected to rebound or coach Mike Norvell could be a goner.

A loss at State could turn up the heat on Elliott and his staff, even though it’s only the second game of the season.

Meanwhile, national media have not been kind to Elliott.

CBS Sports ranked Elliott among the four worst coaches in major college football. The Sporting News ranked him No. 77 nationally and last in the ACC.

Perhaps the nastiest comments, though, came anonymously from some ACC colleagues, who took their shots in a poll conducted by Athlon:

“These guys are in trouble and most everyone expects there to be a staff change at the end of the season or earlier.”

That’s what one unnamed ACC coach said. I will inject my opinion here, that there will not be a staff change earlier than the end of the season. That’s never happened at Virginia and won’t this season, regardless of what happens. It’s not the Virginia way.

More Athlon comments:

“They’ve never delivered on the offensive expectations Tony [Elliott] set coming from Clemson. They’re sloppy on both sides of the ball and we’ve seen some talented players come in, underperform and move on.”

“This is a team you never really worry about playing. They lack discipline and they have no real identity. The parity in this league is increasing and it will be really hard for this program to make a sharp turn up.”

Wow, those are some serious shots by some of Elliott’s fellow coaches. Makes for some good bulletin board material though.

Indiana Hoosiers or Chickens?

Since Indiana backed out of its home-and-home series with Virginia and Louisville, lots of people are pointing fingers toward Bloomington and saying the Hoosiers chickened out of those games for fear of losing against nonconference opponents.

Granted, those games were scheduled when the Big Ten was playing only 8 conference games and have since expanded to 9. UVA and Louisville were replaced by games against Western Illinois and Kennesaw State. Louisville, by the way, beat Indiana in 2023 in a game at Lucas Oil Stadium, but the Hoosiers went on to scrap the home-and-home series.

Indiana is one of five Big Ten teams that won’t play a Power 4 team this season, and presently the Hoosiers don’t have a game scheduled against a Power 4 opponent through 2029.

Coach Curt Cignetti was heavily criticized nationally last season when Indiana reached the College Football Playoffs with the second-lowest strength of schedule among the non-automatic qualifiers (ranked No. 35 nationally).

“You can’t afford a bad scheduling year,” Indiana’s AD said. “You have to schedule strategically. We want our nonconference schedule to put us in the best position for success at the end of the season.”

Are you paying attention, Virginia?

Jerome: Home for Sale

Former Virginia star Ty Jerome, coming off a great season with the Cleveland Cavaliers and recently traded to Memphis, is not just moving NBA teams.

Jerome is selling his home in the hills of Studio City, Los Angeles, and moving to Memphis.

Jerome’s asking price for the 2,866-square-foot, ranch-style home (four bedrooms, five baths) is $2.59 million. He paid $2.58 in February of 2024.

The home has a pool and a fire pit on 0.27 acres, an open floor plan with a huge living room and dining room with a chef’s kitchen.

“The house in LA was and is amazing, but I’m just ready to move on from it, and yes, I’m buying in Memphis,” Jerome told “Gimme Shelter.”

Jerome, 28, has agreed to a three-year, $28-million deal with the Grizzlies after averaging 12.5 points over 70 games in Cleveland. He shot 51.6 percent from the field and 43.9 from the arc.

Meanwhile, another former Wahoo and a former Jerome teammate, 7-footer Jay Huff, was traded from Memphis to the Indiana Pacers, where he’ll play for former Wahoo Rick Carlisle.

Huff, in a breakout NBA season, played in 64 games for the Grizzlies, averaged 6.9 points, 2 rebounds and 0.9 blocks per game, averaging 11.7 minutes per contest. He was one of three seven-footers in the NBA to make better than 40 percent of his 3-point field-goal attempts with at least 200 shots.

Hootie’s Golden Nuggets

• Perfect Game, a baseball publication, has ranked the nation’s top 100 college recruiting classes for 2025, and Chris Pollard’s Virginia program is the only non-SEC team in the country’s top 8.
• The Wahoos come in at 7th place, one spot ahead of Mississippi State, where former UVA coach Brian O’Connor is now coaching. The top six are all SEC schools: LSU, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M. Pollard’s old Duke program, by the way, which has had a ton of its commitments flip to Virginia, isn’t ranked in the nation’s top 100 recruiting classes. Ouch!
• Our spies tell us that Connor Shellenberger, who recently announced that he had joined Lars Tiffany’s Virginia lacrosse coaching staff, will not stop playing professional lacrosse. Shellenberger plans on balancing out playing and coaching, and if anyone can do that, it’s Shellenberger.
• There’s a Twitter account that goes by the name of “Empty Trophy Case,” and it is clearly a creation of a Wahoo fan who reminds us often about Virginia Tech’s lack of national titles in any sport. The latest post, on Friday, read: “VPISU has gone 43,574 days without winning an NCAA championship #TitlelessTown
• UVA baseball has also added another strong pitching arm for its 2026 class in RHP Quinn Showalter out of Collierville, Tenn.  He’s 6-5, 230, with a 96-mph fastball. He was named the Tennessee All West Region top two-way player in the state for 2025. He pitched a perfect game back in April and was named a ‘25 Rawlings Underclass First Team All-American. And yes, he is another Duke commitment who has flipped.
• Virginia’s basketball game vs. Ohio State on Valentine’s Day, 2026, will be played at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
• This has absolutely nothing to do with sports, but if you grew up watching the Andy Griffith Show, you may appreciate it: “The reason Mayberry was so peaceful and quiet was because nobody was married. Andy, Aunt Bea, Barney, Floyd, Howard, Goober, Gomer, Sam, Earnest T Bass, Helen, Thelma Lou, Clara and, of course, Opie were all single. The only married person was Otis and he stayed drunk.”
• This gem from Danny Neckel: Former UVA pitcher Andrew Abbott, who pitched in the All-Star game this week, is the only pitcher to have a sub-2.20 ERA and a .875 winning percentage through their team’s first 100 games since Clayton Kershaw in 2017.
• Notre Dame is the only ACC basketball team with at least 50 percent of its scoring by percentage returning. The Irish return 55.1 percent of their scoring. Virginia Tech is second at 44.9 percent and three teams have 39 percent of their scoring returning: BC, SMU and Stanford. Nobody else has more than 28 percent returning. Both Virginia and Miami return zero percent of its scoring.