CHARLOTTE - No. 25 Virginia came to Bank of America Stadium to wash a “bad taste” out of its mouth, but left Charlotte with an even worse one after suffering a 38-27 loss to West Virginia on Saturday night.
Virginia returned to Charlotte for the first time since falling in the ACC Championship Game last December to Duke 27-20 in overtime. The loss was major talking point for one of the most experienced rosters in college football and the Hoos looked at the Duke’s Mayo Classic game, in part, as a chance to exercise the demons that stuck with UVA months later.
“Feels just, it’s like another dagger,” Virginia defensive end Fisher Camac said. “It’s tough, but we won’t let this one game define us.”
The Cavaliers started Saturday night in excellent fashion with a 12-play, nearly seven minute drive capped by an 8-yard Jekail Middlebrook touchdown. The Mountaineers responded quickly with a 75-yard touchdown drive, which featured their ninth-ranked rushing attack to the tune of 67 yards and finished off with a Michael Hawkins Jr. 13-yard touchdown to tie the game at 7-7.
A 47-yard Xavier Brown touchdown run put Virginia up 14-7 late in the first quarter, but it also proved to be one of only seven explosive plays on the night compared to 14 by West Virginia.
West Virginia broke loose in the second quarter, outscoring Virginia 14-0 and out-gaining the Cavaliers 175 yards to 32. Hawkins Jr. started the quarter with a 29-yard touchdown pass to DJ Epps on a blown coverage and finished with another rushing touchdown of his. The 21-14 halftime deficit was the first time Virginia had trailed this season.
“I think we got to fight, we got to battle, we got to speed things up,” UVA quarterback Beau Pribula said postgame. “Just being down, we got to get going and obviously change the philosophy a little bit. That’s the first time we kind of had to do that so far this year.”
Virginia found momentum in the second half after opting to try to convert a 4th-and-10 with Rico Flores Jr. making a catch on the sideline, his first of the season in his debut. The Cavaliers capped the drive off with a one-yard Middlebrook touchdown catch from Beau Pribula. But WVU responded with another Hawkins Jr. to Epps touchdown to take the lead back at 28-21 heading into the fourth quarter.
UVA had the opportunity to draw even with the Mountaineers on the next drive, going 62 yards to the West Virginia 13-yard line. But Pribula was sacked for a third time, playing behind an offensive line which was missing All-ACC guard Noah Josey for the majority of the game. A once-promising drive ended with a 39-yard missed Will Bettridge field goal.
The Mountaineers delivered the dagger on their next drive as Hawkins Jr. danced into the end zone for his fifth touchdown of the day. He finished with 313 total yards and 5 total touchdowns, while running back Cam Cook rushed for 123 yards. The 247 yards rushing by the Mountaineers were the most allowed by the Cavaliers since Florida State rushed for 256 in the 2025 season. UVA’s defense entered the game ranked tied for 13th nationally in rush defense (65.5 yards allowed) and fourth in scoring defense (5.5 points allowed).
The 11-point loss was the largest margin of defeat for Virginia since the 2024 regular season finale at Virginia Tech (37-17).
“I have to do a better job of making sure that I have them prepared to be able to play at that level, that level of intensity for four quarters,” Cavalier coach Tony Elliott said.
Here are four takeaways from Virginia’s loss in Charlotte.
Michael Hawkins Jr. Runs Circles Around UVA Defense
Priority No. 1 on the Virginia scouting report entering the matchup against West Virginia was containing quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. The moments “containing” Hawkins Jr. were fleeting throughout the game in Charlotte, though.
The Oklahoma transfer finished with 190 yards passing, 123 yards rushing and 5 total touchdowns. Hawkins Jr. became the first player to rush for 100-plus yards against the Virginia defense since NC State’s Hollywood Smothers last season and the first quarterback since Virginia Tech’s Braxton Burmeister in 2021.
“He’s like Lamar [Jackson], man,” Camac said. “He can run. So it was cage him in, but I mean even if you have a good plan for him, sometimes he still beat us.”
Hawkins Jr. accounted for 11 of West Virginia’s 14 big plays on the night, including 5 runs of at least 10 yards. As dynamic as the Mountaineers quarterback was with his feet, Hawkins Jr. made plays through the air too with a season-high 190 yards passing on 17 attempts.
“You saw that if you misfit it kind of like we did early in the game, it goes for a touchdown. And then if you get him behind the chains, they can empty you out and create a lot of one-on-one matchups and he made the throws,” Elliott said. “I think we knew coming in that we wanted to make him one-dimensional if we could, but tonight we struggled in some situations. And then I thought when we did get into some 3rd-and-long situations, he just made the more competitive play than we did. So, I got to do a better job of having the other guys prepared to go make the competitive play in those situations.”
Secondary Takes A Step Back
A remodeled Virginia secondary was one of the clear highlights from the first two games of the season, highlighted by Michigan transfer Brandyn Hillman’s play. The secondary unraveled on Saturday night against West Virginia.
It started with a peculiar starting lineup. Instead of Hillman, who ranked second in the country with 3 interceptions entering the weekend, Virginia inserted second-year safety Montino Williams into the first unit. Hillman would eventually enter the game, but was limited.
Elliott said Hillman suffered from a “tooth issue” and missed the first three practices in the Hoos’ preparation for the West Virginia matchup.
“We wanted to be smart with him and I told him that before the game,” Elliott said. “He practiced on Thursday, but again he wasn’t able to sleep and eat with that and we wanted to be smart from that standpoint.”
UVA had only allowed 130 passing yards per game in its first two games of the season, facing a run-heavy West Virginia offense. And despite the Mountaineers featuring their quick run game, the passing game left more questions for the Cavaliers moving forward.
“Unfortunately, we gave up too many plays,” Camac said. “The moments that we need to make plays, we didn’t. We had penalties, just bad stuff that gets you beat.”
Against NC State and Norfolk State, Virginia had only allowed 5 explosive plays and just 3 through the air. But West Virginia accounted for 6 passes of 15 yards or more, including 2 20-plus yard touchdown passes to leading receiver DJ Epps.
“Couple of them, I thought they had good play design and generated a guy wide open,” Elliott said. “They found the open guy in some space and then they made competitive plays.”
In addition to the explosive plays, the Virginia secondary also struggled with penalties. Omillio Agard was called for a pass interference in the first quarter, which kept the drive alive for West Virginia’s first touchdown of the game. Similarly, Hillman helped the Mountaineers move down the field on their go-ahead touchdown drive in the third quarter to take a 28-21 lead after being called for a block below the waist. Lastly, cornerback Jacobie Henderson was beat on third down by West Virginia’s Jaden Bray for a 38-yard pass, while also getting called for pass interference on the play.
“If you have a 15-yard penalty, that’s the same as having a big play,” Elliott said. “Most of the time when you give up a big play, that drive results in some type of points.”
Noah Josey Injury Stunts The Offense
Virginia appeared to be rolling offensively after its first 12-play scoring drive of the game, where it mixed in 11 different skill players behind a veteran offensive line. The Cavaliers scored touchdowns on two of their first three drives to hold a 14-7 lead.
But on UVA’s fourth drive of the game, things came to a halt. The Hoos only accounted for 32 yards of offense in the second quarter. The key difference was All-ACC left guard Noah Josey was nowhere to be seen. Josey had limped off the field following Virginia’s fourth drive of the game and headed straight back to the locker room with trainers.
Josey appeared to attempt to come back at halftime, but made it three steps during warmups before removing his helmet and walking gingerly back to the sideline.
“It was definitely bad to see, but we’ll see how he is,” UVA right tackle Monroe Mills said.
Virginia had scored on two of the four drives Noah Josey was available. Without Josey, it only scored on one of their next eight drives.
“That played a big part,” Cavalier running back Jekail Middlebrook said. “But we talk about competitive depth, so it’s next man up.”
Reserve offensive lineman Ben York replaced Josey at left guard for the remainder of the game. Elliott downplayed the impact of not having Josey available.
“I felt like you would love to have Josey out there from a leadership standpoint, but I don’t know if it was a glaring issue that cost us the outcome of the game,” Elliott said. “The plan was to play multiple guys, especially on the interior.”
West Virginia defensive coordinator Zac Alley seemed to shift his team’s focus defensively, though, after Josey went out to target the left side of the Virginia offensive line. The possession after Josey went out, the Mountaineers loaded up on the left side and brought down Jekail Middlebrook for a loss of 3 yards on third down. All 3 sacks for West Virginia also came with Josey out of the lineup.
“They did a good job making adjustments,” Mills said. “I felt in the first quarter, we kind of picked it up pretty well and we were doing a decent job with that and then they came in and made some big-time changes. I mean, we just obviously weren’t quite there.”
Pribula took part of the blame for missed pass protection calls and echoed Elliott’s thoughts in downplaying the loss of Josey.
“Obviously, he’s a huge leader for us,” Pribula said. “But I thought the way that the other guys stepped up, it’s a deeper offensive line, and I don’t feel any drop off when that happens.”
Can UVA Play From Behind?
At some point this season, Tony Elliott knew his team would go through adversity and he expected the first moment could come in Charlotte against West Virginia. UVA had not trailed through nearly the first 150 minutes of the season, until 26 seconds remaining in the first half.
That meant Virginia’s offense would need to answer an overarching question for the season: could the Cavaliers make the plays in the passing game when the time came?
In the first real test, the answer was inconclusive. Beau Pribula went 21-33 for 197 yards and 2 touchdowns, but only 4 pass for 15-plus yards and one of those touchdowns coming late in garbage time.
“Obviously, the first two games, I didn’t throw the ball too much, attempts-wise,” Pribula said. “But I think just kind of finding our identity and finding our flow, that’s really what we got to do, is just find a rhythm and find a fair balance. I got to do a better job of executing and keeping us out of bad situations. So that makes Coach [Des] Kitchings’ job easier, and we can stay on schedule and do what we want to do.”
Virginia went 3-9 on third down with 5-plus yards to go on the night, an area where the offense was 3-10 (30%) on the season entering Saturday. The Cavaliers failed to convert six straight third downs, which included three pass attempts short of the line to gain. They were 6-16 on third down for the night.
Pribula finished 1-5 against West Virginia on passes of 15 yards or more and Elliott explained why the passing game never truly challenged a shaky Mountaineer secondary down the field.
“With a lot of the exotic pressures, we probably led more with a controlled passing game as opposed to down the field shots,” Elliott said. “Once we got behind and they’re getting shots on your quarterback, it’s hard to get everything lined up.”
At some point Virginia will need to pass to win games, including down the field. Otherwise more games could look like Saturday’s loss to West Virginia. Pribula feels confident that late drives of 53 yards and 75 yards show the Cavaliers can play from behind, despite those drives only amounting to 6 points.
“You saw it late, where we found the rhythm and put some drives together, obviously, the one we came up for with points,” Pribula said. “We just got to do it quicker, and it’s still super early in the season and we gotta find our identity and just continue to develop. And it starts with me, and it starts with our offense and all the guys. And we’ll take ownership, and we’ll get better moving forward.”
Virginia returns home to round out non-conference play against Delaware next Saturday, Sept. 26 at 6 p.m.
1 Comment