Urgency for Hoos as they prepare to travel to Miami
Players were still in their shoulder pads as they headed directly in front of the computer screen from the practice field at the McCue Center Monday morning.
Virginia’s normal game-week routine doesn’t include practicing on Monday. But after playing Wake Forest last Friday, the Wahoos’ schedule is again accelerated this week as they prepare for Thursday night’s Coastal Division game at Miami.
UVa is off to an 0-2 start in ACC play for the first time in eight years. Thursday’s game will be played at a place where the Wahoos last won a decade ago. They’re coming off back-to-back 20-point losses, the worst for the program in regular season games since 2017.
“Urgency, man,” receiver/quarterback Keytaon Thompson said to reporters on Zoom before he hustled off to a session in the weight room after Monday’s practice. “We don’t have those extra days to prepare, so we have to make the most of the days that we do have and the reps that we do have. It’s not as many reps and as many walkthroughs as a normal we so we have to make sure we’re locked in.”
Thursday night will mark three games in a span of 12 days for UVa. The Hoos were 2-0 until that stretch began with a 59-39 defeat at North Carolina on September 18th. Six days later, Wake Forest handed Virginia a 37-17 loss at Scott Stadium.
Two days prior to that game last week, UVa coach Bronco Mendenhall admitted that he could still sense a wide spectrum of emotions—ranging from frustration to anger, sadness to embarrassment—on the practice field in the aftermath of the loss in Chapel Hill.
Mendenhall was unavailable on Monday; his regular weekly virtual session with the media was cancelled because of a personal matter. But Thompson and fifth-year linebacker Elliott Brown both agreed after practice that the hangover from the loss to Carolina may have lingered too long in the UVa locker room.
“The UNC loss definitely hurt us,” Brown said, particularly because of the Wahoos’ recent success in the series. Prior to this season, Virginia had won four straight against the Tar Heels.
“It was an eye-opening experience for sure,” said Thompson, "because this thing goes by fast and you can’t let one week affect the next week. Win, lose or draw.”
Playing on Friday gave UVa an extra day to start preparing for the Hurricanes, who will be coming off a 69-0 win against Central Connecticut State that came without starting quarterback D’Eriq King, who was out with a shoulder injury. Miami coach Manny Diaz said on Monday that King’s status for Thursday night was unknown, though he’s not expected to play.
Thursday’s game against the Hoos will be Miami’s first in ACC play. UVa will be trying to avoid the program’s first 0-3 start in conference play since the 2013 team went winless in the ACC. The Hoos have also lost five straight games against Miami at Hard Rock Stadium.
Virginia’s last win on a Thursday night was also the program’s last in Miami Gardens: a 28-21 victory in 2011 in which Michael Rocco threw a pair of touchdowns, while running back Perry Jones also threw one and caught another.
As Brown put it on Monday, the Hoos “got back into the lab” over the weekend to revisit the loss to Wake. Film gives the team a chance to “cleanse our sins,” he said. After further review, Brown thought the the defensive scheme against the Demon Deacons was solid but UVa got burned by mistakes in run fits. Of the 473 total yards Wake put up Friday night, 203 came on the ground.
Thompson has sensed a better mood among his teammates in the locker room and team meetings than in the lead-up to the Wake Forest game. Mendenhall has maintained his typical stoic demeanor, he added, with attention being brought to both the bad and good during film sessions.
“He’s always an up-front and honest guy,” Thompson said. “He’s gonna tell us exactly where we’re at and exactly what we need to do to get where we’re trying to go.”
The Wahoos will be trying to regain some ground in the Coastal Division race on Thursday night. Four weeks into the season, three Coastal teams—Pitt, Duke and the Hurricanes—have yet to play a conference game. Virginia Tech is atop the division at 1-0, while Georgia Tech is 1-1, North Carolina is 1-2 and UVa sits at the bottom of the standings.
Brown can still see a path to the program’s second straight division title, though as he acknowledged on Monday, it needs to begin on Thursday night.
“Honestly, we’re looking to win as many games as we can straight. Eight games straight,” he said. “Yeah, eight games straight. That’s all we can think about. The next one is the most important one and a team that’s beatable.”
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