Elliott heartbroken over Clary’s sacrifice for team

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Antonio Clary is done, and Tony Elliott is heartbroken.

Clary, one of Virginia’s top defensive players, will miss the Cavaliers’ three remaining games due to a knee injury, which will require surgery to repair. The strong safety, a grad student from Jacksonville, Fla., tried to make a comeback in last Saturday night’s upset win at Pitt, but suffered a major setback.

Clary played with a partial tear of his ACL, but suffered a greater injury in the game, a chance he was willing to take for the good of the team.

“That was a challenging situation for me because we knew that he had a partial tear,” Elliott said. “He wanted to play, which the doctors felt like and the medical staff felt like if he could rehab and get his knee to a position where the swelling was gone, we could give it a shot.”

Elliott said Clary had been champing at the bit for an opportunity to play, and shared the conversation he had with his defensive star.

“I said, man, this is tough on me because I value and appreciate you,” Elliott told Clary. “I don’t want you to have to deal with anything more than what you’re dealing with this injury. He was like, no, Coach, I have to go this way.”

Elliott said he didn’t want the safety to get injured in practice — if it had to happen, let it happen in a game, but didn’t want him to go through the pain. Still, Clary was adamant about rehabbing and playing again.

“Just a testament to him,” the coach said. “He wanted to go out like a soldier does on the battlefield.”

Clary got his wish, and after two plays against Pitt, he felt his knee buckle and he knew it was all over.

“I love that kid,” Elliott said. “I love everything he stands for. You don’t see that much nowadays, to be honest with you, a soldier wanting to go out on the battlefield. It was tough for me, too. I was kind of reluctant to do it, but once we felt like medically there wasn’t much more that can be done or we knew we were going to have to fix it, but he could have played if it stayed intact.”

Meanwhile, Elliott hopes to get senior linebacker James Jackson back for this Saturday’s game at No. 8 Notre Dame.

Elliott said Jackson has returned to practice in a limited capacity, but that he is hopeful of him being healthy enough to play. Jackson has been out for the past couple of weeks, but should he play at Notre Dame, Elliott isn’t sure how many snaps the senior can play due to conditioning.

UVA plays at Notre Dame on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. (NBC national broadcast). The Cavaliers are a 23-point underdog.