Miami’s first few drives against Virginia Tech last week resulted in a trio of turnovers and a huge hole to climb out of in an eventual loss.
By that measure, things improved by leaps and bounds against the other ACC team from the commonwealth as the Hurricanes scored an opening drive touchdown and notched a 7-3 lead over Coastal Division leader No. 20 Virginia on Friday night.
That score came via a N’Kosi Perry toss to DeeJay Dallas in the first quarter, with the former making his first start of the season in place of ineffective quarterback Jarren Williams. Perry wound up with 61 yards on seven completions but was mostly lucky just to take two sacks behind another questionable offensive line effort.
Dallas was held in check with 23 yards rushing as otherwise there wasn’t much to write home about for the UM offense with just one drive longer than six yards the rest of the first half.
A lot of the credit to that should be given to the Cavaliers defense, which shook off early rust on the initial drive to clamp down the rest of the way. Not everything was good news though, as one of the team’s best players, cornerback Bryce Hall, was taken off the field via cart in the second quarter after another player rolled up onto his ankle in a very serious injury to the senior. To give one a sense of just how bad the injury was, the ESPN broadcast limited things to just a single quick replay -- a concerning issue for Bronco Mendenhall given that Hall is one of the conference’s best defensive backs.
Virginia’s offense, meanwhile, was far from sharp coming off their bye week following a loss to Notre Dame. Bryce Perkins had to scramble constantly in throwing for 120 yards and rushing for 28 as finishing drives proved to be a problem. The team netted a late field goal just before the clock expired in the half and had another earlier attempt blocked by Miami’s Al Blades Jr. but otherwise didn’t come close to points despite moving the ball well enough between the 20’s.
Could we be in store for some more ACC Coastal Chaos as a result? The Canes are certainly proving to be feisty against one of the league’s few ranked teams going into the halftime break.
