For the second straight season, turnovers plagued the Virginia football team in its border battle with Maryland. On Saturday night in Charlottesville, 4 turnovers by the Hoos torpedoed any hopes of avenging last season’s loss as the Terrapins pulled away to 27-13 win in the second half.
In these two meetings with the Terps, UVA committed a combined 7 turnovers with 0 takeaways from the defense to balance the team’s chances. The Cavaliers did not score in the second half of either matchup with turnovers at least contributing to that issue.
All told, it added up to the Hoos’ fourth straight loss to Maryland and dropped this year’s record to 2-1 with a road game at Coastal Carolina up next.
“The biggest thing is understanding that every play matters. … Every play is a huge play. I think we’re growing in that area, [but] tonight we didn’t put it all together,” Virginia coach Tony Elliott said. “But I’m proud of the football team – those guys continue to prepare well each week, excited to play, we’ve just got to clean up a few things. I know these guys will take it to heart. They’re a proud bunch in there. They’ll own the mistakes. We have to tip our hats to Maryland. They made the plays, it’s a good football team, but there’s a lot of things that we control and we’ve got to go back to working on fixing the controllables.”
Virginia became the latest to cough the ball up against the Maryland defense. The Terps have now forced multiple turnovers in five of their last seven games. That includes all three games this season as Connecticut and Michigan State committed 3 turnovers each before the Hoos’ problems Saturday.
UVA quarterback Anthony Colandrea struggled as a large part of that equation. The sophomore starter lost a fumble and tossed 2 interceptions as well. He now has 5 INTs in the two matchups with Maryland. The first 2 turnovers Saturday may have been the most costly because they prevented Virginia from taking early control of the game.
On the Cavaliers’ second possession, they marched quickly inside of the Terps’ 10-yard line thanks to four consecutive plays of 6+ yards, including a 33-yard passing strike to true freshman Kameron Courtney on his first career catch. With goal-to-go, however, two running plays only got the ball to the 5-yard line. When Colandrea scrambled on third down, he fumbled and the game remained a scoreless tie.
The next drive turned out to be an interception as he misfired on a 3rd-and-7 attempt near midfield. Virginia finally broke through with a field goal on its final possession of the first quarter, but that drive came up short in a goal-to-go situation too after a diving 45-yard catch from Trell Harris put the ball at the 6-yard line. Colandrea had a pair of incompletions at the 2-yard line as the team missed a touchdown opportunity. Ultimately, those early possessions that left points on the board proved costly.
Colandrea did lead a quick-strike scoring drive just before halftime as the Hoos went 71 yards in just 49 seconds. A 13-yard carry for Kobe Pace and a 39-yard completion to tight end Tyler Neville ate up a chunk of yards before Colandrea finished it off with a touchdown run. He found a way through the defense and scrambled in for the 10-yard score with 1 second remaining to give the hosts a 13-7 lead and what appeared to be a lot of momentum.
Unfortunately, that didn’t continue after halftime.
“It didn’t matter if we were up or if we were down, we’ve got to come out and play the best second half we possibly could and tonight we didn’t do that,” Elliott said. “I haven’t done a good job the last two weeks of having these guys ready to go coming out of half in the third quarter so I’ve got to do a better job. I’ve got to coach better, got to have them better prepared to win the second half of the middle eight.”
How poor was the second half? Virginia went 3-and-out after it opened with the ball. Colandrea threw his second pick near midfield on the next drive and then UVA went 3-and-out again on its next two opportunities. All told, the offense had 23 yards in the quarter while going 0-4 on third down. Things didn’t get much better in the fourth. The Hoos managed only 59 yards in the final frame and went 1-4 on third or fourth down chances.
Individually. Colandrea finished 21-37 passing for 247 yards with 0 touchdowns to go with 17 rushing yards and the 1 touchdown carry. Harris led the receivers with 4 catches for 72 yards, while Neville added 3 catches for 57 yards. Malachi Fields had 4 catches for 36 yards, but also the team’s other lost fumble and a holding penalty that negated a Chris Tyree touchdown sprint on the opening drive of the game. Kobe Pace and Xavier Brown produced 46 and 43 rushing yards respectively.
Elliott evaluated Colandrea’s night as some good and some bad, but likened it to a shooter needing to keep shooting on the basketball floor.
“We’re not going panic and have a knee-jerk reaction here because there’s some good things he did too,” Elliott said. “He made a lot of plays for us as well. Each one, we’ll dissect individually and try to coach him from a fundamental standpoint, from a situation standpoint but he’s a competitor and there’s nobody in that locker room that’s probably hurting more than him. He wants to go out and do everything he can to help the guys and he’s shown progress. We’re going to be confident that he’s going to continue to progress and it’s a long season.”
Defensively, Virginia kept the game competitive despite the offense’s turnover problems and missed opportunities in the red zone. After the first 3 turnovers of the night, in fact, the defense prevented Maryland from following the takeaways with a score.
Cracks showed up for the Cavaliers as a sandwich around halftime. Immediately prior to Colandrea’s scramble that capped off the first half, the UVA defense had just allowed a 7-play, 47-yard touchdown drive as Maryland capitalized on field position. On that possession, Tai Felton made 2 catches that included a 19-yard touchdown play. He finished with 9 receptions for 117 yards.
The visitors’ first drive after intermission ended with a touchdown too. Nolan Ray had 4 carries for 22 yards to set the tone before Kaden Prather made a 26-yard touchdown catch that gave the Terps a 14-13 lead that they never gave back. Terrapin quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. finished 28-43 passing for 263 yards and 2 TDs with a touchdown run as well.
The Virginia defense did hold Maryland to a pair of field goals as the game crept into the fourth quarter. That kept hopes afloat that the offense might find some rhythm and find a way to win late much like the week before at Wake Forest. Of course, that never happened.
Antonio Clary led the Hoos with a career-high 14 tackles and 2 pass breakups. James Jackson added 12 tackles, while Jonas Sanker tallied 11 to surpass 200 for his career. Jam Jackson had a career-high 9 tackles plus 2 pass breakups.
None of that was enough to get the game into the win column, though. In fact, it marked the third straight season under Elliott that Virginia followed up an ACC road victory with a loss. In the last two seasons, those losses came after Elliott deemed the previous week a ‘program win’ in terms of significance.
In 2022, the Hoos topped Georgia Tech in Atlanta and then returned home to lose 14-12 in 4 overtimes without scoring a touchdown against Miami. In 2023, a 31-27 upset of then No. 10 North Carolina in Chapel Hill was followed by an overtime loss to the Hurricanes on the road and a 45-17 blowout defeat against GT at Scott Stadium. Then Saturday’s dud followed a 31-30 comeback victory at Wake Forest a week ago.
The Hoos vowed to take the latest setback as a learning experience in an effort to avoid the tailspin that followed last year’s big win at UNC.
“I think it’s always tough losing a game you think you should have won,” James Jackson said. “In the past, I feel like we’ve kind of let that hold us back but right now the message is we’re going to learn from this and we’re going to have our best week coming up. … Really the message from the coaches and players is we’re going to learn a lot [from this], come together even stronger, and … just keep pushing.”
Out coached at halftime again,just as well not go to the locker room. Really disappointed in the coaching staff
UVAs first series after the half, 3 vanilla plays and out, was a coach playing scared trying to protect a 6 point lead. Offense played that way rest of the second half.
First down = rolled pocket to take a shot downfield. Safe, but also a thought to try to take a big shot quickly.