What Virginia coach Tony Elliott said after losing to Notre Dame football

Virginia head coach Tony Elliott‘s halftime message to his team at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday was clearcut — “you can’t expect to beat a top 10 team turning the ball over.” The Cavaliers ended up turning it over five times to the Fighting Irish in a 35-14 victory for the home team.

“I told them the truth — ‘we’ve earned right where we’re at boys,'” Elliott said at halftime, when the score was 28-0. “Kudos to them, but it’s really about us. We didn’t make the plays and we gave them short opportunities. And they capitalized. they’re supposed to capitalize. That’s what good football teams do.”

Here’s what else Elliott said after his side’s loss to Notre Dame.

On losing five turnovers to Notre Dame

“The last thing that I talked about with the guys in preparation is that the No. 1 stat is football is turnovers. I pointed out that Notre Dame, I believe they were +12 in the turnover margin. And if you watch the course of their games, they capitalize, too. They’re one of the best teams I’ve seen in terms of capitalizing on other people’s mistakes.

“Obviously, first play of the game, Chris is trying to go field the ball. We put ourselves in a hole right out of the gate. We’re down seven points. We’re chasing a touchdown. And I thought we battled well there in the first quarter. Defense came up with a couple stops. We just forced a couple plays, and they made a couple plays, and next thing you know we’re chasing four scores before we knew it.”

On not being able to cash in on Notre Dame’s muffed punt

“Yeah, the tough part and those guys in there that had turnovers, they’re feeling it more than anybody. They want to do their part to do their teammates. It wasn’t like they were trying to go out there and not take care of the ball.

“And that was tough there because I think we were at about the 12-yard line, almost the 10-yard line, and ball comes out. Football play. But you got to finish with the ball. We talk about the mentality of handing the ball to the ref. That’s kind of the mindset. If you hand the ball to the ref, then that means that you’ve possessed it all the way through the ground.

“Kobe was obviously visibly upset about it because he wants to — he’s an unbelievable teammate and he wants to do well. But, hey, we got to go back to work. I got to coach better. Staff’s got to coach better. We got to figure out how to fix the technique issues we may be having and build the confidence to be able to take care of the football when we have to.”

On switching quarterbacks vs. Notre Dame

“I told [Anthony Colandrea] it wasn’t anything that was final. We were struggling on offense and we needed to see if we could find a spark. I think it was, at that time, the right thing to do. We’ll look at the tape, we’ll evaluate it, we’ll discuss it as a staff before we make any decisions going forward. I think it was just a situation in the game where, man, the offense needed a spark and we were trying to see if Tony [Muskett] can give us one.”

On if Colandrea was trying to do too much vs. Notre Dame

“I don’t know about that as much. I think the one when he was trying to get it to [Xavier Brown], rolling to your left and throwing back to your right is probably too much of a risk. I think the other one going to [Malachi Fields], just didn’t see the safety on that one. He’s been much improved, and that’s what we’re going to focus on. We’re going to focus on the positive strides he’s made and evaluate the things that went wrong in this game and make a decision going forward.

“But man, I’m still a huge fan of AC and I hate it because it’s one of those situations where here we are trying to find a spark on offense. But I know he’s a competitor. And he’ll compete and he’ll take ownership just like everyone in that locker room. Because it wasn’t just AC. We had other turnovers and other plays in the game where all of us are going to want back. So we got to take a look at everything to help this football team and help these young men pick themselves up off the ground the right way and show back up on Monday because we got a lot of opportunties still ahead of us.

“Obviously, this is a non-conference game. We got a chance still to finish out with two more ACC games and have a chance to win five ACC games. We haven’t done that since this staff has been here. We got Senior Day. And we got a chance vs. our rival. So there is still a whole lot for us to play for. I believe we got a prideful bunch in there that will respond the right way. It’s just tonight, things started to spiral fast and we couldn’t pull ourselves out fast enough.”

On Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love

“He can run. He can run. What was most impressive, to be honest, was their ability to break tackles. They broke a lot of tackles and extended plays. I thought they ran hard. I thought he made a really, really good cut on the long run. Obviously, he was pretty clean all the way to the end zone. But yeah, overall, I think 4 runs really well.

“I thought defensively, early on, they were kind of moving us off our spot and were a little disruptive early on. They made the plays. We didn’t.”

On scoring the last 14 points of the game

“I don’t know as much of the scores as knowing we fought all the way to the end. We battled and guys were down, we had some young guys out there, some reserves out there, and they just kept battling. They never quit. I think that’s the sign of a team that has a chance. It’d be different if they gave up and packed it in. But that’s a prideful bunch in there.”

On holding Notre Dame to four-straight three-and-outs

“Then you start giving them short fields and you look up, and the next thing you know, the time of possession. The time of possession, they’re on the field. And I look up at one point at the snap count, we’re in the 50 range and they’re in the high 60s and 70s. It’s just a compounding effect of short fields, multiple snaps, not a ton of rest time, then you’re playing with some guys who need reps but might not have had as many reps. The game is moving fast. It’s good for those guys, though, because they’re going to learn now that they’ve gotten snaps in a game like that. How fast the game moves, that will give them more incentive and motivation to make sure from a practice standpoint they’re really taking full advantage of the practice reps so they’ll be prepared.”