CHARLOTTESVILLE – Las Vegas doesn’t think Virginia will make a bowl game in 2024, as evidenced by the 4½ wins the oddsmakers set as the over/under for the Cavaliers for the upcoming football season.
UVa’s players say, don’t bet on that.
“We know each other. We know what we can be this season,” sixth-year defensive tackle Ben Smiley III said. “We know we have the weapons to produce. Anybody else that thinks we’re going to win less than four games, let them think what they want to think. But we’re going to show them when the season starts.”
The season starts August 31 at home against Richmond, and most prognosticators fall in line with Vegas’s thinking about the team’s prospects. ESPN’s power index, for example, has the Cavaliers ranked last in the ACC, and it’s likely UVa will receive similar projections later this month when the league’s official preseason poll is released.
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The schedule, while presenting some presumably winnable games early – including home dates against Richmond, Maryland and Boston College and road games at Wake Forest and Coastal Carolina – becomes intensely challenging later in the year.
Contests at Clemson, Notre Dame and Virginia Tech highlight the back half of the slate.
Still, the players said they’re confident in what the season, a potentially make or break one for third-year coach Tony Elliott, will bring.
“I think it’s always nice to be the underdog,” graduate defensive end Chico Bennett Jr. said. “When you start winning, then they want to jump on the bandwagon. It’s like, no, just stay right where you’re at. Take your comments and stand on what you said. That’s fine. I’m not really concerned about it because I know what we’re capable of.”
The Cavaliers return 15 players who started at least six games on offense or defense, plus five more with at least four starts last season, in addition to their kicker and punter.
ESPN’s ranking of teams based on returning production put Virginia second in the conference, brining back 76% of its offensive and defensive production from 2023, behind only Virginia Tech (86%).
“Everybody’s healthy. We’re 2024 reloaded,” Bennett said. “If you want to think we’re going to be a four-win team, then by all means. But when you see that we’re in a bowl game that’s pretty big, don’t say nothing then.”
In fact, players said, the program picked up some rare June momentum when it unveiled its new football operations building, a $80-million facility that includes a state of the art weight room, posh locker rooms and a players lounge, and – finally – individual meeting rooms for each position group.
Can a day spent dressed in suits rubbing elbows with donors, cutting an oversized ribbon and showing off a new building really translate into positive energy heading toward August camp?
“I think it does,” sophomore offensive lineman McKale Boley said. We have the facility to back us up. We have a new vibe, a new energy. That can transfer over to the football field.”
Virginia will need it. It went 3-7 in 2002, Elliott’s first year leading the program, and 3-9 last year. He’s just 3-12 in ACC games as the Cavaliers’ coach.
While this is just Year 3 of his original six-year contract – one that pays him more than $3.5 million annually – the pressure on the former Clemson offensive coordinator figures to be intense. And the schedule doesn’t offer much help.
“It fuels me. Ever since I’ve stepped on campus everyone’s hated on Virginia, called us slouches or the little brother,” Smiley said. “But this year, I feel a little different. This is my last year. I feel like we have all the pieces.
TE Wood returning
Virginia tight end Sackett Wood Jr. received an NCAA waiver and will play this season, a school spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
The 6-foot-4, 240-pound graduate student from Lynchburg did not participate in spring practice but has since rejoined the program. Wood has played in 31 games the past four seasons, catching 21 passes for 306 yards.
Wood, who started eight of the nine games he played this past season, rejoins a rebuilt tight end room that includes transfers Sage Ennis (Clemson) and Tyler Neville (Harvard).
In all, the Cavaliers have nine tight ends listed on the roster: Wood, Ennis, Neville, juniors Karson Gay and Henry Duke (Mills Godwin High), sophomores TeKai Kirby and Hayden Rollison (Collegiate), and freshmen Henry Omohundro and John Rogers.
The position has not had a major impact since Elliott took over before the 2022 season. Last year, Wood and Grant Misch combined to catch 12 passes. The season before, that duo caught 29 balls.
A tight end has not scored a touchdown in Elliott’s two years leading the Cavaliers.