Maryland opened as a 14.5-point favorite against Virginia, per DraftKings, as head coach Mike Locksley looks to guide the Terps to a 3-0 start for the third consecutive season.
Virginia, meanwhile, will look to right the ship on Friday night as second-year head coach Tony Elliott looks to avoid the program’s first 0-3 start since the 2016 season. Virginia also enters Friday with a question mark at quarterback with Monmouth transfer Tony Muskett looking to return to the starting lineup.
In first start with Virginia, Muskett finished just 9-of-17 for 94 yards in a 49-13 loss to Tennessee, but the veteran couldn’t finish the game after suffering a shoulder injury in the fourth quarter. That led Virginia to turn to true freshman Anthony Colandrea, who finished 2-of-7 for 12 yards. With Muskett sidelined, head coach Tony Elliott turned to Colandrea against James Madison in week two as he proved Hoos fans a glimpse into the future, Colandrea finishing 20-of-26 for 377 yards and a pair of touchdowns against one interception.
It wasn’t enough for Virginia to pull off its first win of the season as a James Touchdown with 55 seconds left-handed Virginia a 36-35 defeat in Charlottesville, but it was enough for Colandrea to be named ACC Rookie of the Week on Monday.
Still, Tony Elliott admitted he could still turn back to Tony Muskett against Maryland this weekend.
“My approach is that you don’t lose your job for an injury but, it gives us a tremendous amount of confidence in Colandrea,” Elliott said following Saturday’s loss. “We’ll assess Tony [Muskett], see where he is. Today, he was available in an emergency situation. I anticipate that by the time we get ready to roll out next week, he should be back ready to go, but don’t quote me on that yet. I gotta wait to see what the doctor says. My approach has been that you don’t lose it, but we’re gonna need both of them. I think that competition is great. I think healthy competition is really good because it makes each other better and then it helps our football team. It’s a long season, we’ve got ten more football games, and we’re gonna play some physical football games. We’ve got to do a good job of balancing that competition, but we’ll assess and see where Tony [Muskett] is, and then figure that out as we go through the week.”
Whether it is Colandrea or Muskett, Elliott will hope it jolts a Virginia offense that sits last in the ACC in scoring (24), total yards (298) and rushing yards per game (56.5) while allowing the most sacks (8) through two games.
Maryland, meanwhile, moved to 2-0 and used 38 unanswered points to overcome a quick 13-0 deficit. Head coach Mike Locksley wasn’t shy that Maryland underperformed as they look to bounce back against their former ACC rival this weekend.
“Our standard is to start fast and finish strong and we didn’t do either one of those two things and we’re still able to come away with a pretty good win,” Locksley said Saturday. “And so, for us, nobody in locker room is excited about how we played but we overcame some adversity, early adversity, which kind of showed me that we’re the type of team that I thought we could be. We battled back after a slow start, didn’t see anybody panic, saw us kind of keep plugging away. Our defense really held them in check, minus the first drive and that last drive, and then we got a quick turnaround on us with Virginia coming into The Shell Friday night, which forces everything up a day early for us. And so, we’ve got to, instead of the 24-hour turnaround, we’ve got to kind of enjoy it now, get recovered. As a coaching staff, we got to put this on the bed pretty quickly and start our preparation for UVA who comes in here again on Friday.”
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