The old sports saying is that defense travels. For the Virginia football team, that wasn’t a good thing for the second game of the season.
After allowing 524 yards in a 37-20 loss to Richmond at home last week, the Cavaliers traveled to Oregon on Saturday and gave up 632 yards in a 44-26 defeat to the Ducks. The Wahoos are 0-2 in Bronco Mendenhall’s debut season.
The Cavalier coach said he saw progress in Autzen Stadium as the team showed better sideline demeanor and stayed engaged in the competition all the way to the end, two teaching points from the week.
”We won’t quit. We’re becoming determined, we’re becoming resilient, and we’re starting to like football,” Mendenhall said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. ”Our execution hasn’t caught up with that yet, but they want to play and they came all the way out here to play until the end and they did. It was a pleasure coaching this team today. I saw a lot of things we can build on. Certainly, plenty to correct, but it was a step forward.”
The execution indeed continued to be spotty.
The Spiders sustained drives to take advantage of the UVA defense last week, scoring on six drives of at least six plays. The Ducks used a similar blueprint with five scoring drives of at least six plays and they ripped off big-play scores of 77 and 85 yards too. Oregon erupted for 24 straight points to turn a 6-6 tie into a 30-6 halftime lead.
Quarterback Dakota Prukop and running back Royce Freeman keyed the attack. Prukop threw for 331 yards and 3 touchdowns, while Freeman piled up 207 rushing yards with 2 touchdowns. Freeman’s 85-yard TD run is the seventh longest rush allowed in UVA’s program history.
On the other side of the ledger, Micah Kiser and Quin Blanding led Virginia with 9 tackles each. Juan Thornhill added 7 stops.
Despite the defense’s struggles, Mendenhall saw positive steps at Oregon.
”There’s a number of assignments that are easily fixable, but against good people, fast people, and good teams, especially offenses that score about 50 a game, you have to be right on point,” Mendenhall said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. ”They have a good running back and good receivers. Our execution isn’t yet ready to play that consistently. I’ve got to help it get there as fast as possible, but I think we’ll take a step forward based on this game and we’re trying to accelerate it as fast as we can.”
The Virginia offense, meanwhile, found its footing much earlier than in the season opener. A late surge against Richmond scored a pair of touchdowns in the final 4:16 and helped UVA barely break 300 yards; that included only 38 rushing yards with 35 coming on the final drive.
The Cavaliers had much more consistency against the Ducks. They converted twice as many third and fourth down chances this week and sustained more drives as a result.
That all started with a better effort in the running attack where UVA had 193 rushing yards on 40 attempts (4.8 yards per carry). Albert Reid paced the ground game with a career-high 126 yards and 1 touchdown on 15 carries. Taquan Mizzell added 48 yards and 1 touchdown, while Jordan Ellis checked in with 46.
“[Albert Reid] was running hard and he was running for power,” Mendenhall said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “He was knocking guys down and he was wanting the ball again.”
Starting quarterback Kurt Benkert didn’t have as good of an outing as his debut, but he completed 20 of 29 passes for 193 yards and 2 touchdowns. He also threw 2 interceptions and was sacked 6 times. Keeon Johnson, Doni Dowling, and Olamide Zaccheaus again led the receivers. Johnson posted 40 yards and 1 touchdown on a career-high 6 catches. Dowling and Zaccheaus had 54 and 47 yards, respectively. Warren Craft snared his first career touchdown reception as well.
Virginia kicker Dylan Sims missed an extra point, while a 2-point conversion attempt failed in the fourth quarter to arrive at 26 points. UVA also came up short on a fake field goal rather than try a 38-yarder. The Cavaliers also got flagged for 10 penalties and 102 yards.
Overall, however, the Cavaliers seemed to take some steps up the steep incline toward improvement cited by Mendenhall earlier in the week.
“There’s a lot of bright spots today that can be built on,” Mendenhall said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “Again, tons of execution work to, a lot of mistakes to clean up, but the spirit, the effort, and the willingness to fight to the end, I saw glimpses of that today that I was really proud of.”
