Even as the clouds grew darker above Scott Stadium, the football gods continued to shine down upon the Virginia football team.
There was the would-be touchdown pass off the hands of a Duke receiver. The short field goal attempt clanking off the upright. Fumbles taking favorable bounces. Passes deflecting off defensive backs and in the hands of receivers. A botched snap at the goal line.
Everything seemed to fall in the Wahoos’ favor on Saturday afternoon at Scott Stadium. Things escalated quickly. The rain came and went, and by the time the sun started peeking out again, UVa had completed a 48-0 dismantling of the Blue Devils.
“Sometimes there's beauty in the ugly,” UVa center Olu Oluwatimi said afterward.
Said safety Joey Blount: “I like to call it UVa magic.”
The Wahoos brought that magic home after back-to-back wild wins on the road. Over the past two weeks, Virginia had allowed its opponents line up for potential game-winning field goals on the final snap, only for those kicks to either drill the upright (at Miami) or sail wide (at Louisville) as time expired. The combined margin of victory in those two road wins: three points.
“I would say I do think that someone is shining down on us for sure,” Blount said. “But all in all it just kind of falls in our favor. And I don't want to rely on missed field goals or, hitting uprights for us to win games. But of course when it happens, you take it for what it is and you run with it, you don't look back.”
The good fortune began on UVa’s first defensive series, following a seven-play field goal drive by the offense to open the game. Duke responded by marching 68 yards to the 7-yard line, with 52 of those yards coming on three third down conversions. On the Blue Devils’ fourth third down attempt, Gunnar Holmberg’s pass went through the hands of an open Jake Bobo in the end zone for what could have been a go-ahead touchdown.
Instead, Duke chose to line up for a short 25-yard field goal attempt—and the kick rang off the left upright.
“Once they missed that one we were like, ‘All right, let’s get this done,’” said UVa receiver Billy Kemp.
The Wahoos did just that, scoring on each of their next five possessions to finish the first half. Four of those drives ended in the end zone. They each included fortuitous plays from the perspective of the home team.
Quarterback Brennan Armstrong lost the ball on sacks twice; teammates fell on both. Jeremiah Lewis jumped the route on an Armstrong throw but the ball deflected off the Duke defensive back and wound up in Kemp’s hands for a 16-yard gain. A Duke defensive stop in the second quarter was negated by a roughing the punter penalty. Malachi Fields had a fumble bounce out of bounds. Dontayvion Wicks converted a third and 13 but then lost the football, then recovered it himself.
By the time Armstrong hit Jelani Woods for a 7-yard score with just five seconds left in the half, the Hoos had built a 34-0 cushion. It was the highest-scoring first half of Virginia football against an ACC opponent since the Wahoos hung 35 on North Carolina over the first two quarters of a 56-24 win in 2004.
Armstrong wasn’t at his sharpest, but still finished with his standard video game numbers. He posted 296 passing yards and a pair of touchdowns in the first half, the fourth time in seven games this season that he’d surpassed 250 passing yards by halftime. He finished the game with 364 passing yards and those to scores. Entering the season, that passing yardage total would have been good for 12th on UVa’s single-game list; for Armstrong, it was merely his fifth-highest total of the season.
Virginia’s 48 points matched the most for the program against an ACC opponent in Bronco Mendenhall’s six seasons as coach. The 48-point margin of victory equaled the second largest for the Wahoos in an ACC game since 1982, George Welsh’s first season as head coach. It was the sixth time in seven games that UVa put at least 30 points on the board, and the third time they broke 40.
Such gaudy statistics have become the expectation or Armstrong and the offense. Saturday’s defensive performance was less predictable. It was UVa’s first shutout in a conference game since blanking Maryland 31-0 in 2008.
“Oh shoot, I was seven,” inside linebacker Nick Jackson said when told of that last ACC shutout.
Saturday’s defensive performance came against a Duke team averaging 31.5 points per game entering the weekend. The Blue Devils were held to 325 yards of total offense; 215 passing and a season-low 110 on the ground. All three were ACC lows for the UVa defense. With 82 yards against the Hoos, running back Mataeo Durant had his streak of four straight 100-yard rushing days come to an end.
Virginia entered the game with a league-low two interceptions on the season. They had doubled that number by halftime with second-quarter picks from De’Vante Cross (on an overthrow) and Blount (on a deflected pass). When Antonio Clary forced then recovered a fumble in the third quarter, it gave UVa its first three-takeaway day of the season. The Wahoos also won the turnover battle for the first time this year.
For a defense that has been “working their guts out,” as Mendenhall has repeatedly put it, since giving up 59 points and 699 total yards in a loss at North Carolina last month, Saturday’s performance was a much-needed tangible result of the work being put in on the practice field and in the film room.
“I think we're very capable of playing games like that,” said Blount. “Early on the year we stumbled a little bit but I think we're getting our footing a little bit better, and we're gonna keep working forward.”
And on a day of lucky bounces, the defense finished with one more bit of good fortune. Against a defense populated with backups, Duke moved within a yard of getting on the scoreboard for the first time with less than two minutes to play. But when backup quarterback Riley Leonard lost the football, linebacker TC Harrison was there to fall on in and preserve the shutout.
“It means the world,” Jackson, who racked up 11 tackles, including a career high four tackles for loss and his first sack of the season, said of the shutout. “Definitely as a defense, you never want anybody to cross the end zone. We got home, we took defending our turf and right now, just to see that shutout, it means all the hard work during the week paid off.”
"I think it was really big for not just our defense but for the team and the morale, that 1-yard line stop,” said Blount. “We’re trying to hold that pillar. Not just the pillar, but we want the zero on the scoreboard.”
Mendenhall wasn’t sure what kind of toll the emotional last-second wins on the road may have taken on his team, though he didn’t see a drop-off in preparation this week. Given the week-to-week volatility of the Coastal Division, he certainly didn’t anticipate a 48-point shutout win on Saturday. The victory helped the 3-2 Hoos (5-2 overall) continue their climb back up the Coastal standings with another division game at home against Georgia Tech.
Saturday’s game may not have come down to the final snap like the previous two, but it still required quite a few (often literal) bounces to go the Wahoos’ way. Whether a product of effort or of a higher power looking favorably upon his team, it didn’t matter to a relieved Mendenhall afterward.
“Man, to recover that many (fumbles) and then to have another ball bounce off a goalpost,” said the head coach, who improved to 35-34 at UVa with the win, “I’ll take it all.”
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