The Virginia football team's hopes of scoring an upset against rival Virginia Tech came up short Saturday, as the Hokies prevailed 42-13 against the Cavaliers in front of a packed Scott Stadium crowd.
With the victory, the visitors from Blacksburg extended their winning streak against the Cavaliers to six games. Virginia's last win in the series came at home in 2003, when the Cavaliers prevailed 35-21.
"I really wanted to beat Tech, but I was unable to do so," Virginia senior quarterback Jameel Sewell said. "It would've been amazing. It would've done everything for us. It's a poor season we've been having, but that would've brought us all together even more and made us feel like we were champions."
Sewell did his best early to help the Cavaliers (3-9, 2-6 ACC) in their attempt to knock off the Hokies (9-3, 6-2 ACC), rushing for 44 yards during the first drive of the contest - including a 15-yard touchdown scamper in which he stiff-armed a Hokie defender before running just inside the left pylon for the score. Sewell also completed an eight-yard pass to junior receiver Dontrelle Inman on the drive. Seniors Vic Hall and Rashawn Jackson rushed for the rest of yardage on the 10-play, 73-yard drive which took 5:33 off the clock.
"That was one of the principal things that we were going to try to do," coach Al Groh said of Virginia's plan to turn Sewell loose on several runs.
Although Sewell's runs did not always accumulate much yardage this season, the plan worked relatively well against Tech, as the senior totalled 104 yards in his final game as a Cavalier.
"It was very fun to be able to pound the rock the way that we were able to do so with me and Vic and Rashawn," Sewell said. "We didn't let up. [The] offensive line got on those blocks, and they really opened things up for us. They didn't really have an answer for that in the first half, and it was a lot of fun. The crowd was into it, the sideline was into it, everybody was into it and I was, as well."
The problem for the Cavaliers, though, was that the Hokies managed to unleash their own impressive ground attack, anchored by Ryan Williams. The freshman, who has performed admirably this season in place of an injured Darren Evans, was effective all game against a meager Virginia defense, answering the Cavaliers' score with one of his own from five yards out to knot the score at 7 with 4:58 left in the first quarter. It was one of four touchdowns Saturday for Williams, who rushed for a career high 183 yards.
"Williams made some plays," Virginia senior linebacker Aaron Clark said. "He's a great back ... A guy like that, you've got to take away the lanes, and we didn't do a good enough job of doing that."
Apart from Williams' run, the biggest play of the drive may have been the first. With Tech backed up to its own 16-yard line because of a penalty incurred during the kickoff return, Virginia failed to keep the Hokies pinned deep. Junior quarterback Tyrod Taylor launched a pass downfield, connecting with sophomore flanker Danny Coale for 41 yards to reach Virginia's 43-yard line. Virginia junior cornerback Ras-I Dowling failed to turn around on the coverage and the ball fell perfectly into Coale's hands.
The Cavaliers responded by making their second drive look almost as good as their first, marching downfield with the help of their established running game. A late defensive stand by Tech, however, forced Virginia to settle for a field goal by sophomore Robert Randolph from 33 yards out to take a 10-7 lead.
The Virginia defense stiffened and forced Tech to punt on its next drive, giving the offense a chance to go up two scores. Bogged down after two solid drives, though, Sewell and Co. went three-and-out. Tech took advantage and grabbed its first lead of the game on the ensuing drive as Williams scored another touchdown, this one from 20 yards out.
Of the Cavaliers' nine losses this season, they held a lead at one point during seven of them.
"We let it get away from us," Hall said. "They capitalized and made plays."
Virginia remained unable to move the ball on the following drive but stiffened again on defense, forcing the Hokies to attempt a 40-yard field goal, which went wide.
With time running out on the first half, the Cavaliers' offense finally got churning again, making it all the way to Tech's 24-yard line. Facing a fourth-and-2 with 44 seconds left, Virginia elected to kick another field goal and went into the locker room down 14-13.
Tech got the ball first after halftime but the Cavaliers forced the Hokies to punt, creating an opportunity to regain the lead. After a 29-yard Sewell rush to the Tech 46-yard line, however, the offense stalled and had to kick it away.
The Hokies, starting on their own 19-yard line, advanced all the way to the Cavalier 25-yard line and were poised to go up by two scores before the Virginia defense came up with another stop. Taylor lofted a pass into the end zone, where Virginia senior cornerback Chris Cook out-jumped a Hokie receiver for his fourth interception of the season.
"We're thinking we're going to win the game," Sewell said about his thoughts after Cook's interception. "As simple as that, I'm thinking we're going to win the game, we're going to go down there and take the lead, and the defense is going to continue to do what they do - hold them, stop them - and we're just going to maintain that lead and win the game."
But the Cavaliers made a grave error on the second play of the subsequent drive. Sewell pitched behind senior running back Mikell Simpson on an option run, and Hokie senior safety Kam Chancellor picked up the loose ball and made it all the way to the Virginia 10-yard line before being forced out-of-bounds.
"It just wasn't executed well enough," Groh said.
From there, the Hokies easily scored their third touchdown on a four-yard run by Williams to go up 21-13. Tech put the game out of reach on its following drive, eating up nearly five minutes of the clock on the way to Williams' final touchdown, this time from two yards out. With the score, Tech led 28-13 with 12:50 left.
For the Cavaliers, it only got worse, as the Hokies added two more scores. Virginia, meanwhile, continued its second-half offensive ineptitude also on display a week ago at Clemson, against which the Cavaliers failed to score a single point in the second half.
In conjunction with Williams' impressive all-around performance, Taylor's 34 yards scrambling helped Tech rack up 298 total yards on the ground.
"Tyrod did the same thing to us that he's been doing to everyone all year long," Groh said. "The plays that I remember about the second half were the ball that we turned over and the completions that were part of tries that scored that were as the result of the quarterback either scrambling out and running with the ball or scrambling out and eventually finding an open receiver."
The loss to in-state rival Tech ended a tumultuous season for the Cavaliers, who endured their worst finish in Groh's nine years as coach.
"This whole week's been fairly emotional, and not necessarily in a crying way," Clark said. "It's tough to go out like this, and we really wanted to give that to coach Groh and to go out on a happy note, but it's life - you've got to keep your head up and keep going"
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