Kam Robinson runs with an interception for Virginia. ~ Photo courtesy Virginia Athletics Media Relations
The Virginia football team found success on the road earlier this season, including in South Carolina, but Saturday’s trip to Clemson didn’t follow suit. The Tigers responded after a close first quarter with 35 unanswered points on the way to a 48-31 victory.
UVA falls to 4-3 overall and 2-2 in the ACC with the loss. While the score remained close through halftime at 17-10, No. 10 Clemson clearly displayed its dominance for most of the final three quarters. Cavalier coach Tony Elliott viewed this game, a homecoming to his alma mater and long-time coaching home, as a measuring stick and said it gave the program plenty of learning points.
“Every opportunity is a learning opportunity,” Elliott said. “The ones that you don’t necessarily like are the ones that hurt the worse, but you also know the ones that hurt the worse usually are the most growth. So our guys will grow from this. It’s a great opportunity for us to learn what progress we’ve made and the areas where we truly need to make more progress. I knew this was going to be one of those types of games where we get to truly evaluate where we are as a program and today we got to see that. We’ll own it. We’ll go back to work.”
Virginia stayed in the competition early thanks to some timely defensive plays. After the UVA offense started the game with a three-and-out, Clemson marched down field with a pair of third down conversions – which turned into a theme by the end of the day – aiding an 11-play drive. The Tigers appeared to convert on 3rd-and-Goal for a touchdown too, but an illegal man downfield penalty erased that play and Virginia linebacker Kam Robinson made a tackle on the next play to force a field goal.
After UVA tied the game at 3-3 with a drive of its own, Robinson came up with another big play for the defense. On the final play of the first quarter, Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik tried a pass across the middle while rolling right. He must not have seen Robinson or completely missed his target as the ball hit Robinson on the numbers for an easy interception. That set up a touchdown that gave the Hoos a brief 10-3 lead, but eventually the defense would lose its footing.
The Tigers had only 91 yards in the first quarter, but pile up 448 yards the rest of the way. That helped fuel the 35-point surge that turned a deficit into a 38-10 lead. They scored 5 touchdowns on 7 possessions that bridged the halves. Virginia had trouble creating pressure and didn’t finish plays in the pocket when a few chances materialized. Clemson also converted 9 of 15 third downs in the final stats. Klubnik finished 23-of-35 passing for 308 yards, 3 touchdowns, and the lone INT. Phil Mafah posted 74 rushing yards and 2 touchdowns, while Troy Stellato had 74 receiving yards. Antonio Williams had 3 catches for 44 yards and 1 carry for a 36-yard touchdowns.
Robinson finished with 8 tackles. Trey McDonald, playing in place of an injured James Jackson, led the way with 16 tackles, while Jonas Sanker added 8. Corey Thomas Jr. and Jermarian Jackson each had 7.
“Too many wide-open guys running around so that tells you that’s just communication issues,” Elliott said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “Guys got to communicate and do it quickly, especially when you’ve got a very fast team, you don’t have opportunity to make up time. That’s what I saw there. I thought early on we kind of kept the run in check … but then later in the game, the running lanes just got a little too big. We weren’t condensing the gaps and we got a couple of misfits that we got to get cleaned up so time to go back to work.”
With the defense unable to hold the fort during the middle quarters, the Virginia offense sputtered for most of the first three quarters.
The Hoos did drive 14 plays for that first field goal after failing to convert a touchdown in the red zone again and they capitalized on the Robinson interception too, though that drive had a dicey start. They lost 7 yards on first down after a short pass to Chris Tyree and Anthony Colandrea threw an incompletion on second down before he scrambled for 20 yards on 3rd-and-17 to move the chains. Colandrea then completed three straight passes to tight ends, the final two to Dakota Twitty who scored from 8 yards out.
After that touchdown at the 12:26 mark of the second quarter, Virginia did not score again until the first play of the fourth quarter and Clemson up big.
Colandrea found Malachi Fields behind the defense for a 44-yard touchdown on that play. Later in the quarter, backup quarterback Tony Muskett engineered a 9-play touchdown drive with 5 completions helping the cause. That included a TD pass to tight end Sackett Wood Jr. Kobe Pace added a 2-point conversion catch as well. Muskett also connected with receiver Ethan Davis later in the quarter for a 65-yard touchdown strike as both teams exchanged big-play touchdowns with the outcome essentially decided.
Colandrea finished 15-26 passing for 159 yards and 2 touchdowns; he did lose a fumble. Muskett went 6-7 passing for 119 yards and 2 touchdowns. Fields and Davies led the way with 65 receiving yards, while Pace had 35 rushing yards to lead that category. UVA converted 5 of 13 third downs.
Regardless of the statistics, though, Clemson’s 21-0 third quarter advantage was too much to overcome.
“That’s generally what happens – it’s a few plays or a few mistakes by the opponent and then they capitalize,” Elliott said. “Before you know it, they’ve jumped on you and you’re like woah, what just happened because it happens so fast. That’s why every play is critical. Every play could be the break in the game. You never know when it’s coming and the third quarter was kind of the break in the game. They made some plays, we made some mistakes, we didn’t make some plays, and before you know it you’re chasing a couple of scores.”
For the first time this season, Virginia faces a two-game losing streak after Saturday’s result. In Elliott’s first two seasons, two-game losing streaks turned into three or more consecutive losses four different times. With a difficult schedule ahead, that puts a lot of pressure on the upcoming North Carolina game next Saturday.
Elliott said he expected his team to refocus with that rivalry game on deck.
“Regardless of what the outcome is today, we’ve got to turn our attention to North Carolina that’s coming in and we’ve still got a lot to play for,” Elliott said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. “That’s what I told them in the locker room is that we’ve got five games left. We have give games left and we have an opportunity to win them all. That would be an unbelievable season and they would end up where they want to be. But we can only do it one game at a time. We have a team coming off a bye, they had an opportunity to get healthy, to get a little bit of extra work on us, they’re coming to our place, we beat them last year so they’re going to come in motivated and inspired, but we’ve got to focus on us.”