Emotional Virginia faces a big task in the opener against No. 12 Tennessee

Virginia plays its first game without three downed teammates on Saturday when it faces No. 12 Tennessee in both teams’ season opener in Nashville, Tennessee.

Running back Mike Hollins was wounded in the November 2022 shooting deaths of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry on the Charlottesville, Virginia campus.

“I can only imagine the emotions that will flow through my body,” Hollins said of taking the field for the opener. “I’m literally at a loss for words because the spring game hit me like a bag of rocks and I wasn’t expecting it so I can only imagine it. I’m ready though. I’m ready for it.”

Virginia canceled its final two games last season following the tragedy and went 3-7 in Tony Elliott’s first season as head coach, including 1-6 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Elliott named Monmouth transfer Tony Muskett as the Cavaliers’ starting quarterback. He passed for 5,687 yards and 51 touchdowns in 23 games with the Hawks from 2020-22. He won an offseason battle with Anthony Colandrea to replace Brennan Armstrong, who transferred to North Carolina State.

“Take care of the ball, find completions in the passing game, get proper control if you need to,” Virginia offensive coordinator Des Kitchings said of the decision to go with Muskett. “He checked the box on all of those things.”

Hollins enters the season as a backup to last season’s leading rusher, Perris Jones, and Clemson trades Kobe Pace.

Virginia has not posted a winning record or attended a bowl game since the 2019 season.

Meanwhile, Tennessee finished 11-2 last season and was ranked No. 6 in the final Associated Press poll. The Volunteers capped the year with a 31-14 victory against Clemson in the Orange Bowl.

The Volunteers are four-touchdown favorites at Nissan Stadium as quarterback Joe Milton III takes over full-time from Hendon Hooker, the 2022 Southeastern Conference Offensive Player of the Year and now a rookie with the Detroit Lions.

“I’m excited for him. He’s a guy who did it the right way when things didn’t go his way early on,” third-year head coach Josh Heupel said of Milton, who filled in for the injured Hooker and completed 19 of 28. passes for 251 yards and three touchdowns in an Orange Bowl victory.

“He looked at himself and saw how he needed to keep improving to get better, trust his coaches and the program and believe in the guys around him inside the locker room.”

Since transferring from Michigan after the 2020 season, Milton has thrown for 1,346 yards with 12 touchdowns and zero interceptions in 17 appearances (four starts) for the Vols.

Linebacker Aaron Beasley, Tennessee’s leading tackler last year and a preseason Bednarik Award candidate, said the team is entering the season with an aggressive mentality.

“Super aggressive, plays very fast… just attacking,” he said. “We carry a lot, so just playing in the opponent’s backfield. Affecting the line of scrimmage, affecting the quarterback, it’s really super aggressive.”

Heupel said there will be a moment of silence before kickoff and that the Volunteers will wear decals on their helmets to honor deceased Virginia players.

The Volunteers hold a 3-1 lead in the all-time series, but this is the first meeting between the schools since Tennessee defeated Virginia 23-22 in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 1990.

—Field-level media