Virginia Cavaliers Availability Report for North Carolina: Who's in and Who's Out?

Wide Receiver Cam Ross is out for this game on Saturday and Virginia is going to be without one of its top playmakers against the Tar Heels. It will be up to Trell Harris and Jahmal Edrine to step up and be reliable targets for quarterback Chandler Morris on Saturday.

The good news for the Cavaliers is that center Brady Wilson is going to be available for this game. Wilson is one of the best centers in the ACC.

Just this week, head coach Tony Elliott was talking about the importance of keeping Morris upright:

"I think every game plan is different. I think if you study Washington State their structure was they weren't going to give you many perimeter runs with your with your quarterback because of the alignments that are linebackers, you know, they were going to force you to try and run between between the tackles and when you look at it kind of how how we're built and what Chandler's skill set, it's not ideal to run him between the tackles. You want to get him out in space on the perimeter. So I think some of it was structurally, they were going to present some different opportunities as opposed to other game plans versus different opponents."

Bounce back game?

Last week was a close call for UVA, but they found a way to defeat Washington State and clinch bowl eligibility for the first time under Tony Elliott. This team has shown the ability to win close games recently and that was something that Elliott talked about this week as well:

"Yeah, so and I mentioned this to the team yesterday, a lot of games in football are lost as opposed to won.

And what you're seeing is our guys are finding a way to make the play to win the game and eliminating the mistakes to lose the game, right? So when I think about a lot of those close losses, it was more so man, we just didn't quite make the play we needed to make. And I think now the guys understand that. And so they're taking pride in the way we finish practice with having a fourth quarter mentality. So that in the fourth quarter, we can eliminate the mistakes and then we can go make the plays. And if you look at the past game, man, there were some critical mistakes on the other side that allowed us to capitalize.

And so, like, it kind of held true, right? But if we can stay poised and composed in those moments, then we don't make the critical mistake. Because I don't know if y 'all saw me, but I was probably, I was animated there at the end of the game because we got him down there on the two-yard line. And man, we want to be aggressive. But we don't wanna hit that quarterback and fall on him and get a 15-yard penalty. We don't wanna be out of control on a deep ball and have a pass interference.

And now we give them a new set of downs, which could create momentum for them to go, you know, score and kick the field goal. So I think the difference is the guys are truly understanding what it takes to win games. And then if somebody is going to make a mistake, then we can capitalize where I think in the past we were on the other side. We were making the mistake and other teams were capitalizing."

Virginia will look to continue their winning ways on Saturday against North Carolina (12:00 p.m. ET, ACC Network).