Looking Back: Wahoos need to do a much better job at home

Following UVa’s blowout loss to arch-rival Virginia Tech last month, the players and coaches trudged off the Scott Stadium field as rival fans stormed it and celebrated at the 50-yard line. The loss punctuated a rough 3-9 season, and down the stretch felt more like a road game as UVa fans headed for the exits and Tech fans celebrated their team’s victory.

And unfortunately for Tony Elliott and Co., while having opposing fans storm your field hasn’t been the norm, walking into the tunnel following a loss has become all too familiar.

Over Elliott’s first two seasons in Charlottesville, home wins have been hard to come by: UVa is just 4-8 at home over the past two seasons, going 2-4 in both 2022 and 2023. Half of the home wins came against FCS competition, with just one of the two FBS wins coming over an ACC foe. The Hoos snuck by ODU last year, winning on a game-winning field goal as time expired. The Monarchs finished just 3-9, so not exactly a high-quality win. And in November, UVa beat Duke 30-27. The Blue Devils were on their third-string QB for that game, but UVa was also playing its backup and there’s no reason to apologize for an ACC victory.

Since Elliott took over, UVa is just 2-7 on the road and 2-8 if we count the loss to Tennessee in Nashville, which was technically a neutral-site game but felt like it was happening in Knoxville. The road record is far from good, but isn’t really out of line with how Elliott’s predecessors did away from Charlottesville.

Virginia’s previous three coaches—Al Groh, Mike London and Bronco Mendenhall—combined to go 30-82 on the road, equalling a 26.8 percent win percentage; Elliott is currently at 22.2 if the Tennessee game is excluded. Groh had by far the best road record at 17-34, and he had a pair of winning records on the road, going 3-2 in 2004 and 4-2 in 2007, which isn’t a huge surprise as those were his two best seasons. It is worth noting that both of those seasons had a road win against a non-P5 opponent (Temple in 2004 and MTSU in 2007), which are rare occurrences for UVa.

Both London and Mendenhall struggled on the road, and the difference between the two regimes was the record at Scott Stadium. London went just 5-24 on the road and had an abysmal run of losses away from home to end his tenure. Even more remarkable than the bad record, his teams earned four of those road wins in just one season, 2011. And again, it shouldn’t be a shock that was London’s best year in Charlottesville by far. His only other road win came in 2012, when UVa beat NC State coming off a bye week. He lost his last 13 road games in charge of the Hoos.

Mendenhall, meanwhile, had a few more opportunities to win on the road and went 8-24 on other school’s fields. He certainly won away from UVa more consistently than London did but had just two seasons where he won multiple games on the road: 2019 (2-3) and 2021 (2-3). The difference between those two seasons, and Mendenhall’s tenure versus London’s, was the performance at home. UVa went 7-0 at home in 2019, winning the Coastal Division. In 2021, the Wahoos went just 4-3 at home. That’s the difference between 9-3 and and Orange Bowl bid, and a 6-6 season that ended with a resignation. Mendenhall went 25-13 at Scott Stadium, a big improvement from London’s 22-21 record that included four losses to non-P5 competition. Mendenhall went 1-5 at home in a tough first year in charge, but then was 24-8 from there, only losing to FBS foes (Virginia Tech twice, Boston College, Indiana, Pittsburgh, NC State, Notre Dame, Wake Forest). He also talked about how making Scott Stadium a tough place to play was a priority. After struggling in 2016 with just one home win, Mendenhall started having more frequent practices in the stadium to try and get his players used to performing there, in hopes that it would lead to a turnaround. And eventually, UVa went 21-3 at home over a stretch between 2018 and 2021 (there were no fans during the 2020 season) but UVa went 5-1 in Charlottesville and 1-4 on the road.

Elliott needs his home record to be more like Mendenhall’s than London’s but is far below both of them thus far. Through 12 home games, UVa has had plenty of games that came down to a play or two. Its two FBS home wins came by five total points. The Cavaliers also had one-possession losses to Miami and UNC last year, the first of which came in four overtimes. They also lost one-score games to JMU and NC State this year, both of which were decided in the final minute. But, they have been outclassed in a bunch of games, too. Last season, Louisville beat them by three scores, and Pitt beat the Hoos by 30. And this fall, a pair of 6-6 teams rolled them at Scott Stadium: Georgia Tech won 45-17 and Virginia Tech embarrassed UVa 55-17 in the aforementioned finale.

There is one commonality in UVa’s home games, particularly the losses, and it is the slow starts. In UVa’s eight home losses, the Wahoos have been shutout three times (Miami and Pitt last year, VT this year). In those eight losses, as well as the two wins over FBS competition, they have failed to score more than 10 points in the first half. They’ve also trailed by multiple scores in the first half in half of their losses, the worst being a 28-0 first quarter deficit to Pitt last year and a 24-0 halftime lead for the Hokies last month. UVa also trailed JMU 14-0 early and was down 24-7 to Georgia Tech in the second quarter before making it 24-10 going into half.

So perhaps Elliott will need to adjust his strategy to get his players fired up to defend their home turf, on game days, through the game weeks, or both.

And of course, UVa’s diminished home-field advantage, in part, can be attributed to some tepid crowds.

Virginia averaged 43,293 fans through the gate this year, though that number is a bit inflated by big crowds from visiting JMU and Virginia Tech. Last year, UVa hosted six games, with an average crowd of 40,681, with none bigger than the 44,156 that showed up for the loss to UNC. The empty seats early in the Elliott era are disappointing, but the average crowds are actually up a bit from the first couple years of Mendenhall’s term. In his first two years, UVa averaged 39,929 fans per game in 2016, and 39,398 in 2017, the first bowl-eligible season since 2011. Each of those seasons’ attendance numbers were boosted by one game that approached 50k, the first game of the Mendenhall era against Richmond and the Tech game to end the second season.

UVa had to win games under Mendenhall with smaller crowds at first, and then eventually more fans started coming out. In the 2019 season where UVa went 7-0 at home, Scott Stadium averaged 47,862 patrons, with three home crowds of 50k+ (FSU, Duke and VT). That was the best on-field product UVa fans have had to watch in a long time and the Cavalier faithful were rewarded with a perfect home record.

So while UVa could use bigger crowds in the future, the Hoos have won with empty seats before and in order to get more folks in the stadium, they’ll probably have to show some signs of progress first.

Over the past 23 seasons, they have posted a winning record at home 17 times. The exceptions were the worst seasons: 3-9 in 2009, 4-8 in 2012, 2-10 in 2013, 2-10 in 2016, and the last two seasons, when UVa went 3-7 and 3-9 under Elliott. UVa has won at least four home games in each season that it was bowl eligible since 2000, and in eight of those 11 seasons the Cavaliers won five home games or more, losing no more than one in those years. The other two seasons that they were postseason eligible, they went 4-3, in two 6-6 seasons and London’s outlier 2011 campaign where the they won four on the road.

Conversely, they have consistently struggled to put up a bunch of wins on the road, which is true for most college football programs. Since Groh took over in 2001, UVa has just three seasons with a winning road record: 3-2 in 2004 (though one of those wins was at Western Michigan), 4-2 in 2007 (one win was at MTSU) and the aforementioned 4-1 road record in 2011 that got UVa to an 8-4 season. The road wins that year at FSU and Miami were impressive to be sure, but two of the wins away from Charlottesville came against 1-11 Indiana and 2-10 Maryland; it’s incredibly fortunate to draw two teams that bad. In 14 of 23 seasons since 2001, UVa has won zero or one game on the road. Groh had two seasons with a pair of road wins, and Mendenhall had three such years.

So if UVa is going to turn around its record, history says the program will have to do it at home. Fans can expect their team to win a game away from Charlottesville, maybe two if things break right, or zero if they draw a tough schedule or simply aren’t very good. Anything other than those outcomes is an anomaly.

Looking ahead to 2024, UVa again has just six home games, which should be something the Cavaliers try to avoid because of everything outlined above. UVa will have a pair of road trips outside of ACC play, at Coastal Carolina in September and at Notre Dame in November. The trip to South Bend will be tough, so UVa really could use a win in Conway early in the season. Road trips to Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, and Virginia Tech are unlikely to yield more than one win, and anything more than that would be a great outcome.

At home, UVa hosts Richmond and Maryland out of conference and takes on Boston College, Louisville, North Carolina, and league newcomer SMU in Charlottesville. UVa absolutely needs to beat Richmond, and then the Hoos either need to go 3-1 or better in conference games or beat Maryland and go no worse than 2-2 in ACC home games. If they don’t go 4-2 at home, it feels like a postseason berth would be pretty unlikely. And given their tough road slate, they might need to go 5-1.

At least two of their first three games next year will be at home, so the team could really use a fast start. And they need to start faster in the individual games, too, and avoid big halftime deficits that have been a problem through the Elliott era.

Overall, 2024 will be a pivotal season for Elliott and his staff at Virginia, as they look to prove they can get it done. And if they are going to do just that, they’ll have to successfully defend Scott Stadium and send their fans home happy on those Saturday afternoons, regardless of how many show up.