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It ought to be one of the most fun experiences a group of athletes and coaches can ever have. Saturday night in Charlotte, the Virginia Cavaliers — as a reward for breaking the 15-game losing streak against Virginia Tech and winning their first ACC Coastal Division championship — get to face the Clemson Tigers in the Hoos’ first ACC Championship Game.
Yes, one could make the case that Virginia is under pressure in this game. It is a claim I don’t agree with, but I can certainly see and respect the logic. (A reminder: One can respect a claim and still disagree with it. One can acknowledge someone’s reasoning as sound and yet arrive at a different conclusion.)
One could make the case that Virginia needs to play Clemson well in order to somehow justify or validate the season it had. One could say that Virginia needs to make the ACC Championship Game interesting, something which hasn’t been the case since 2016. One could say that if Virginia is to make the Orange Bowl, it needs to do so on the strength of a good performance versus Clemson. Again, I disagree with the idea that Virginia faces significant pressure in this game, but if you wanted to make the case, you could.
Ultimately, though, Virginia — which did not play Clemson in the regular season — gets a free shot at the colossus of the ACC. The Cavaliers have a chance to ruin Clemson’s season and win a conference championship in the process.
We all said that the 2019 ACC Coastal was there for the taking in Charlottesville. Bronco Mendenhall, Bryce Perkins, and the rest of the Hoos didn’t waste that opportunity. Their season wasn’t free of stumbles, but when all the pressure sat on their heavy shoulders in the fourth quarter against Virginia Tech, the Hoos rose instead of faltering. That fundamental response to championship pressure will always endure as a testament to what this team, this program, has accomplished.
Are we REALLY going to hammer Virginia if it does something everyone else in the ACC has done over the past several years? Are we REALLY going to pulverize the Hoos with criticism if they get kicked around by the Dabo Dynasty at Clemson?
Let’s be very clear about this: Virginia’s season is a success no matter what happens against Clemson. The goal was to finally win a division title and remove the “O-fer” from UVA’s historical track record. The goal in 2019 was to beat Virginia Tech en route to that Coastal championship. Virginia has achieved what it set out to do, and no one can take that away from Bronco, Bryce, and everyone who wears Virginia colors.
We started the 2019 ACC season thinking that no one would touch Clemson. In truth, that hasn’t entirely held up: North Carolina had a 2-point play to beat the Tigers, but chose a horrible option play to the shortside boundary. Since that one escape, Clemson has been Clemson. The Tigers are one win from another College Football Playoff and another chance to pursue the national championship in late December.
Please: Let’s not view competitiveness against Clemson as the standard by which Virginia has to be measured. That would represent an act of shifting the goalposts. Virginia has already measured up by the standards the program needed to reach in 2019.
This Clemson game? It’s a bonus if UVA can gain anything from it. This is a free opportunity for the Hoos. They have nothing to lose except a game everyone already expects them to lose.
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