‘Long time coming’: Cavaliers get 1st win since on-campus shooting last year
More Teams. More Games.
Malik Washington hauls in a 27-yard touchdown catch to increase Virginia’s lead in the fourth quarter. (0:31)
Virginia won for the first time since an on-campus shooting killed three football players last year, beating William & Mary 27-13 in a victory coach Tony Elliott called “a long time coming.”
It has been nearly one calendar year since the Cavaliers won a game, going back to a 16-9 victory over Georgia Tech on Oct. 20, 2022. Three weeks later, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were shot and killed on a bus after returning back to campus from a field trip Nov. 13, and the rest of the regular season was canceled.
Virginia dedicated this season to their teammates and came close to victory in its home opener against James Madison — when the families of all three players were honored in a pregame ceremony — before falling just short 36-35. The Cavaliers went into the William & Mary game 0-5 and on an eight-game losing streak going back to last season, so a victory Saturday — no matter the opponent — was something Elliott and his players would celebrate.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Elliott said. “They’ve worked extremely hard. They’ve had to persevere through a ton of adversity. I think that most people know what’s on the surface. But behind the scenes, just the things that these young men have had to persevere through. Just extremely proud of them. I don’t care if some people could say it might not be pretty, but a win’s a win and we needed to win.
Virginia had lost three games this season by a combined seven points — tough results to take after everything that has happened.
“The record, nobody in our locker room, in this organization, feels excited or feels good about where we are,” Elliott said. “You got a group of folks that realize the opportunities we didn’t take advantage of, and we want to make sure that we capitalize on the ones going forward.
“But, really, it’s just confirmation for those guys in there because they’ve worked extremely hard. They show up every single day.”
Perris Jones had a career-high 138 yards rushing on 12 carries and described the win as a “confidence boost.”
“It’s huge,” Jones said. “Being so close in the last couple games that we’ve had, as we said in the locker room, we’re tired of saying we’re so close, let’s get there. And I think today we did that.”