There’s a certain symbolism to the work the Virginia football team put in on Observatory Hill this summer.
“In the offseason, we did this thing where we go to O-Hill and we run the hills, just to train to go on the road, because it’s uphill,” UVa safety Antonio Clary explained on Monday. “The games on the road, it’s uphill.”
Winning consistently on the road has indeed been an uphill challenge for the UVa football program. Entering this year, the Hoos had won multiple ACC road games twice over the previous 10 seasons: in 2019 (2-2) and in 2011 (3-1). In the seven seasons in between, Virginia only won four total conference games away from Scott Stadium.
But by rallying for a wild 34-33 win at Louisville on Saturday, this year’s team made it back-to-back ACC road wins in as many weeks. A Virginia team last did that a decade ago. As coach Bronco Mendenhall said on Monday, “If it hadn't been done prior to the past 10 years, it probably means it's hard.”
With those two wins, UVa hit the halfway point of the schedule at 4-2 overall and 2-2 in the ACC. Three of the Cavaliers’ final four conference games are at home, beginning with games against Duke and Georgia Tech at Scott Stadium these next two weekends. Duke is 0-2 in the conference; like UVa, Georgia Tech is 2-2 in the league, and off this week before traveling to Charlottesville.
Virginia is 12-3 at Scott Stadium in ACC play since the start of the 2018 season. Neither Duke Duke nor Georgia Tech has won in Charlottesville since 2013. The home team is an early 11-point favorite for Saturday afternoon against the Blue Devils.
That favorable schedule has provided Virginia a chance to gain even more ground in the bunched-up Coastal Division standings, where four of the seven teams already have at least two conference losses and only two—Virginia Tech and Pitt, both 1-0—are still unbeaten in ACC play.
But Mendenhall wasn’t looking at it that way on Monday.
“I would love to say I've already looked that far ahead, but I've taken just the opposite and a really myopic approach with the team,” he said. “It's just this week, like we have no other games. We're at Scott this week, and based on that one we'll sit around the phone and see if someone calls us to see if we have a game next week. We're literally just going, cliche, one at a time, and that's the best thing I can do for our team.”
The two players available to the media on Monday, Clary and wide receiver Ra’Shaun Henry, both said they haven’t started worrying about the route to a Coastal Division title either. Clary admitted that he’ll allow himself a few minutes on Saturdays to check other scores from around the league, but during the week the sole focus is on the next opponent.
“We’ve known from the beginning of the season that we if handle our business, we can take the Coastal. And then seeing these teams losing and stuff like that, we can really do it,” he said. “So we just got to stay focused, keep this momentum going, and take each game, each week by week.”
This is the fourth time in Mendenhall’s six seasons that Virginia has at least four wins at the halfway point of the regular season schedule. The head coach and two players hit on various subjects during Monday’s virtual availability. The latest 3-2-1:
