After UVA beat Duke 30-27 last week, Virginia's freshman quarterback Anthony Colandrea was quite confident in himself and his team, so much show that he proclaimed to the media that UVA was going to beat Virginia Tech and take back the Commonwealth Cup.
#UVA QB Anthony Colandrea on #Hokies game: "After this game versus Tech, after we beat Virginia Tech, this program is going to shoot up and everyone in the country is going to know about us."
— Mike Barber (@RTD_MikeBarber) November 19, 2023
Unsurprisingly, those comments did not go unnoticed in Blacksburg with Virginia Tech's staff putting those comments up wherever they could as quarterback Kyron Drones shared.
"It was on our TVs that we have in the locker room," Drones said on where the quote was posted in the VT locker room.
Tech made sure that Colandrea would regret those words as the Hokies put up the most points in Commonwealth Cup history on their way to a 55-17 victory over UVA. After the game, Drones made it clear that the comments said by Colandrea provided some extra motivation.
"It provided a lot of motivation. You shouldn’t really say things you don’t really know about. This is your first time playing college football and you’re already speaking on stuff. That’s really a bad way to go. It was a lot of motivation. We had it up in our locker room and we just went on from there," Drones said.
It also provided a little extra motivation to the defense who could do something about those comments. Starting DE Cole Nelson played a particularly big role in that with six tackles including 2.0 sacks in this game, getting his fair share of hits on Nelson.
Nelson said that Tech was riled up by those comments, especially given that Colandrea was a freshman, and wanted to make sure that he learned his lesson.
"That riled us up especially for our seniors. When you see a young man, a freshman, just talking about how he’s gonna beat us, like he never played us before, he never played in this game before, he never played in this type of environment, and we just had to go out there and show him what’s up," Nelson said.
So yeah, Virginia Tech didn't take what Anthony Colandrea said lightly. And while Colandrea talked a big game in the build-up, Virginia Tech played a big game and taught the UVA freshman quarterback a lesson on their way to a 55-17 victory over UVA, their 20th against the Cavaliers in 22 matchups this century.
