Virginia heads to Winston-Salem on Halloween with a chance to do the kind of thing that rarely shows up on the forecast: pull an upset that nobody is betting on. More likely than not, the Cavaliers are staring at a loss by a few scores against No.
14 Wake Forest. But that same kind of expectation was hanging over last season’s trip to Charlottesville, when No.
12 Virginia stunned the Demon Deacons.
This matchup starts with strength against strength. Wake Forest owns the ACC’s third-best scoring defense, and Virginia sits fourth in that category.
Flip the field, though, and the gap gets more troubling for the Cavaliers. The Demon Deacons also have the conference’s third-best scoring offense, while Virginia’s attack has been stuck in neutral all month.
The numbers tell the story. Among FBS teams, Virginia’s offense ranks 125th in October and has averaged just 16 points per game. The passing game has gone stale, and third down has been even worse, with the Cavaliers converting only 27.2% of their chances this month.
That leaves Virginia needing a sharp turnaround from Beau Pribula, and there’s little recent evidence one is coming. He hasn’t thrown multiple touchdowns or topped 160 passing yards since September. If Wake Forest crowds the box and chokes off the run, the afternoon could get ugly in a hurry.
Still, Virginia has reason to believe its defense can make this competitive. Last season, Gio Lopez was the starting quarterback at North Carolina and looked merely ordinary against the Cavaliers, throwing for 208 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions in a 17-16 Virginia win.
He was sacked three times in that game. Now at Wake Forest, Lopez has grown into one of the ACC’s top quarterbacks and enters this week third in the conference in passing yards per game.
That creates the biggest challenge for John Rudzinski’s defense. His scheme fits well against a quarterback like Lopez, who can hold the ball too long and sometimes doesn’t feel pressure from his blindside. Lopez is left-handed, which only sharpens that matchup.
There is also the road issue, and Virginia’s recent travel record in the region has been rough. The Cavaliers’ bowl victory is their only road win away from Scott Stadium in almost a year, and their last true road triumph came Nov. 15 at Duke. This trip lands in Winston-Salem, and the environment won’t be welcoming.
Virginia has also had its struggles in North Carolina overall. It is 0-2 in its last two trips to Charlotte, lost its last game in Raleigh, and the most recent trip to Chapel Hill was close, just like the 2024 visit to Winston-Salem.
The setup is clear: a struggling Virginia offense, a dangerous Wake Forest quarterback, and a road test that comes with plenty of baggage. The question now is whether the Cavaliers can snap the trend and keep an almost-lost season from slipping further away.
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For Virginia, it is another sign that Mallorys rookie season turned heads beyond Charlottesville, even before the real heavy lifting of the year begins. He also picked up preseason All-ACC second-team honors, which only adds to the sense that the Cavaliers may have a backcourt centerpiece worth tracking all season as the award race develops through fan voting and the selection process. [Read more 🡒]