UVA’s Blue-White spring game is Saturday at Scott Stadium

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When the transfer portal for college football re-opens next week, Virginia will be among the programs looking to bolster their rosters for the coming season.

The Cavaliers open Aug. 30 against Coastal Carolina at Scott Stadium, and their options will have increased by then, and not only because of the transfers they expect to add. Thirteen more scholarship freshmen will arrive on Grounds in June—six enrolled in January after graduating early from high school—and most of the UVA players sidelined this spring by injuries should be available when training camp begins in August.

Still, if a finished product won’t be on display Saturday at Scott Stadium, UVA fans will find much to interest them anyway. For the annual Blue-White game, which will air from noon to 2 p.m. on ACC Network, the Wahoos’ spring roster has been split into two teams, and many of the players who’ll take the field are transfers who were elsewhere last season, including quarterbacks Chandler Morris (North Texas) and Daniel Kaelin (Nebraska).

Head coach Tony Elliott said Thursday evening, after his team’s 14^th and penultimate practice of the spring, that he’s reminded his players that the Blue-White game is “an opportunity for us to show our faithful the work that we’ve been putting in. It’s an opportunity for us to compete.

“The next time we’re together is in fall camp, and the next game is going to be a real game. So this is an opportunity for us as coaches to evaluate some of these new guys in a game-type environment. The fans get to see all the guys that they’ve heard about that have come in from the portal, so to speak, and some of these midyear freshmen.”

Scott Stadium is “sacred grass,” Elliott said, and so the Cavaliers have “a responsibility to go out and compete and put together a good showing.”

Virginia’s players say they take that responsibility seriously.

“Any time you get to put the pads on and you go to the Scott Stadium, it’s a special day,” defensive end Billy Koudelka said. “And I think it’s a day that we’re all going to look forward to, being able to put the actual game jerseys on and get ready to go in front of some fans and family.”

Tailback Xavier Brown said the…