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Keith Payne is up to 10 TDs, the most in a single season since Wali Lundy in 2005. |
Halloween is still more than a week away, but Scott Stadium looked a lot like ghost town on Saturday night. The 37,386 fans in attendance saw the Cavaliers struggle through a scary-looking first half before they easily dispatched Eastern Michigan 48-21. Four different Hoos scored touchdowns, including the career firsts for Terence Fells-Danzer , Paul Freedman and Trey Womack , as they rolled to the home win.
“It feels good to win a game and be able to celebrate with the players on what this team can do and can accomplish,” UVa coach Mike London said. “Can’t let the highs get too high or the lows get too low, but we haven’t won around here in a while and when you get a chance to experience a win regardless of the opponent, when you have a chance to compete you always want to win.”
“This win does a lot of good for us,” running back Perry Jones said. “We have forgotten about the past, and started a ‘new’ season. To us this is the first game of that season, and it is good to get a win.”
In getting their first win against a Football Bowl Subdivision school since defeating Maryland in 2009, the Cavaliers posted some impressive final statistics as one might expect in a 27-point victory. Senior running back Keith Payne continued his end zone visits with two more touchdowns in the game, giving him 10 rushing touchdowns on the season, the most in a single season since Wali Lundy also had 10 in 2005; he gained 69 yards on 13 carries. Jones added 57 yards on 10 carries and Raynard Horne chipped in 11 carries for 44 yards. Matt Snyder and Kris Burd led the receiving corps with 10 combined catches. Snyder had a career-best 6 grabs for 68 yards while Burd pulled in 4 receptions for 54. Burd set a new career mark for catches in a season and now has 31 on the year.
Senior Marc Verica remained the starting quarterback and delivered a workman-like performance in leading his team to victory. Verica completed 18 of 31 passes for 203 yards and 2 touchdowns. London said that fifth-year veterans have the ability to bounce back from rough outings like last week’s 3-INT night against UNC.
“He’s seen good times and bad times and he understands that part of it is going through the criticism and hearing the boos. Part of being a mature fifth-year guy is understanding that you are a game away or a throw away from righting your ship and playing the way you are capable of playing,” London said. “That’s what he did. He wasn’t worried about what people were saying or what he wasn’t doing. He just followed the game plan. The third downs, the passing yardage, the red zone opportunities – those things presented themselves and he was on. If you talk to him, he is probably satisfied with his performance but he wants to get better. That’s the difference between a guy like that and young quarterbacks. Sometimes you ruin a young quarterback by having a rough day because they can’t handle the things that a veteran would.”
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Terence Fells-Danzer scored two touchdowns. |
In addition to all the offensive numbers, two of the night’s highlights came on special teams.
Fells-Danzer, who caught his first career touchdown pass with 9:37 remaining in the third quarter to give Virginia a 24-14 lead, didn’t wait long to get back to the end zone. The next time he touched the ball as a matter of fact. Fells-Danzer turned a short kickoff into a 70-yard touchdown return. It was the second shortest scoring return in program history with the shortest coming on a 46-yard kickoff return for touchdown by Joe Crocker in 1994 against Maryland.
“It felt real good. I’ve never done that, even in high school, I never had a two-touchdown game. It was unexplainable,” Fells-Danzer said. “Coach Poindexter said if you catch it and you have space, just use the blocks that are already present for you and just go with the return. … Nobody touched me on the kickoff return.”
Verica said he was really pumped up after the return for touchdown for TFD.
“I couldn’t be happier for TD. I’m very good friends with him off the field as well so to see him score the touchdown, that was awesome,” Verica said. “Then when he took the kickoff back, that was just surreal. I was out of mind celebrating. I was as happy as anybody.”
The other special teams play that drew a loud roar from the fans? Punter Jimmy Howell , a high school quarterback, threw his first career touchdown pass to senior safety Trey Womack on a fake punt. After the snap on the play, Womack came across the field behind the line of scrimmage; while the three shield protectors fell to the ground for blocks, Howell delivered a perfect pass to an uncovered Womack, who easily sprinted down the home sidelines for the 56-yard score. Unlike a similar fake punt call at Southern California, this one was not flagged.
Howell said that you do have to play it cool and carry out your typical pre-kick routine in order not to give anything away. Then you just have to play like you practice where the Hoos have worked on various fakes throughout the season.
“I try to be a little calm. It’s definitely exciting knowing what you’re about to do so yeah, you still have to keep it calm. Just do the same routine. Standard operating procedure is what Coach [Ron] Prince used to tell me and Dex definitely tells me that now,” Howell said. “He was open and I was just like get it to him, don’t try to do anything special, just deliver the ball like you have in practice and sure enough [it worked].”
While the outcome eventually reached 27 points, one of the most concerning aspects of the game had to be the Cavaliers’ run defense, which had trouble again this week.
That’s because the Eagles found something that worked on offense, a jet sweep from the wideout slot, and kept going to different variations of the action with some quarterback read option mixed in for Alex Gillett. In the first half alone, EMU posted 209 yards rushing on 21 carries, a robust 9.95 yards per carry; most of the 209 rushing yards came from looks within the jet sweep concept.
The visitors cashed in on three long touchdown runs out of those various sets. Running back Javonti Greene, lined up a receiver, took a pair of mirror-image runs to the house from beyond midfield. In the first quarter, Greene ran from left to right as the jet motion man and took the hand-off over the right edge for a 55-yard touchdown. In the third quarter, Green flipped the direction and sprinted from right to left before turning the left corner for a 53-yard TD.
With a 5:18 remaining in the first half, Gillett was the benefactor of the look. He faked a handoff to the jet motion man moving from left to right on a read option call and then kept the ball himself to run back to the left side for a 31-yard touchdown that tied the game at 14-14.
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The UVa defense had trouble with the run in the first half. |
UVa defensive coordinator Jim Reid complimented the Eagles’ blocking scheme, but said once the Cavaliers made some adjustments, mainly simplifying the calls, they handled the defense better. In the second half, only Green’s 53-yarder did significant damage; if you take out that one missed play and the 17-yard loss on a low snap, EMU rushed 18 times for 11 yards.
“What they did I thought, which was really good, was gave us a formation we hadn’t seen and we expected would be a pass. They put the guy in motion and they gave him the ball and we got stuck on some blocks. I thought we took care of that as the game went on. It puts a lot of pressure on you because it’s very detailed, assignment football,” Reid said. “It was really neat, they’re running counter blocking schemes, pulling people in opposite directions, and handing the ball off on the sweep so if you’re reading everything right, you’re going in the opposite direction. It was really a challenging game. … In the second half, we said we’re going to skinny down what we planned to do. We were going to skinny it down so that way we had an opportunity to see the reads and react to the reads … We didn’t call much at all in the second half and we had a little bit better success.”
EMU isn’t the only team lately running the ball with a high rate of success this month, though. Florida State rolled up 256 rushing yards on 42 carries in a 34-14 win on Oct. 2. Georgia Tech, a run-heavy offense, cranked out 477 rushing yards on 74 carries in a 33-21 victory. That, of course, is a concerning red flag with five ACC games remaining, including Miami next week at noon.
UVa safety Rodney McLeod said the team will just have to keep working on the things that need improvement.
“We will watch the game tape tomorrow, and work on fixing aspects of the defense such as stopping the run,” McLeod said. “I think this week, with a good week of practice, we will be fine.”
