Around the Corner 8/30: D-line ready to wreak havoc, men’s soccer bounces back, and new fan initiatives at Scott Stadium

Good morning my fellow Wahoos. Great to have you joining me for another day of chatting about the Virginia Cavaliers. We’re solidly into the fall sports season and, with football just four days away, we’re quite close to a full weekly slate of UVA sports for the first time in months!

Notable news

Fan Experience Initiatives for 2022 UVA Football Season — Virginia Sports

First off on today’s news is the lengths that Virginia Football is going to to increase attendance come this Saturday and throughout this season. With the Wahoo Walk returning, a Fan Fest at AFC, orange and blue LED Lights on the Pergola, a new tradition of the players and staff singing the the Good Ole song in front of the student section, and a whole lot more, Tony Elliott and his staff are making it clear that they care about filling up Scott. And that’s great to see.

Virginia Cruises to 4-0 Victory Over Rider — Virginia Sports

After an upset loss to Xavier in the first contest of the season, the UVA men’s soccer team got back on track last night with a comfortable 4-0 win over Rider.

Said HC George Gelnovatch:

“It was a great team performance tonight. I’m really happy we were able to put the game to bed in the first half and be able to put lots of people on in the second half and get to play a ton of guys. Now we get to focus on Thursday which will be a really good game [against JMU].”

Virginia defensive end Chico Bennett ready to bring ‘chaos’ — Wahoos247

The Virginia defense is a big question mark this year following the paper-thin performances from the 2021 season. With a reinvigorated defensive line, there is hope that both the pass rush and run defense will be much improved with the new staff at the helm. The senior Chico Bennett should be a big part of that and he in particular has bought into the coaching of the new staff.

Bennett also sees a push to force takeaways by the staff. According to the defensive end, players are rewarded for their turnovers by seeing their face on the big screen, across several TV monitors in the facility.

“It drives everybody because everybody likes to see their faces, and their pretty, pretty white teeth,” said Bennett. “It helps everybody just keep going for the overall goal, just turnovers. Chaos is what we’d like to bring.

“One of the core things that he wants us to do is just create chaos, just play free fast, play and play together as a defensive goal.”

Social media dive

As the offensive line is another huge unknown for UVA football in 2022, OL Coach Garrett Tujague has been hard at work developing an entirely new starting group to protect Brennan Armstrong. And, as a fun tweet celebrating game week, Tujague’s daughter (a great follow on Twitter btw) tweeted out this picture of their family in offensive line trenches. Hopefully UVA will be as solid as this group looks.

Then, in case you missed it, UVA commit and legacy TE Tekai Kirby had a big-time performance last Friday including this 59-yard touchdown catch.

Lastly, the UVA men’s lax team is back on the field for fall ball practice as the ‘Hoos hope to climb back to the top of college lacrosse after one year away from it.

Student perspective

Well, I believe I finally have my class schedule figured out. Had to add and drop another pair of classes yesterday but hoping that’s it.

And, while I didn’t intend for this to happen, this latest class swap actually leaves my Tuesdays open at 1:00 PM. Why does that matter? Because that’s when Tony Elliott’s weekly presser is so I’ll be able to ride my bike over to JPJ each week and get you coverage from there! We also should be getting a first look at UVA’s depth chart later today.

Gonna keep this one short today. If you see a blonde kid on a red bike heading down Alderman Road today, that’ll be yours truly booking it to try and go talk to Elliott for you all.

Keep it classy Cville. We’ll be getting more up on the site later today.