Kitchings: Tony Muskett Expected to be Starting QB for Virginia at Maryland
Tony Muskett has been all but confirmed as the starting quarterback for Virginia for the game at Maryland on Friday night. UVA offensive coordinator Des Kitchings met with the media after practice on Wednesday and, echoing Tony Elliott's sentiments that a player doesn't lose his job due to injury, said that Muskett will be UVA's starter on Friday "if he's available."
"If he [Tony Muskett] is ready to go, he's the guy," Kitchings said on Wednesday. "Yeah, you don't lose your job for injury cause he's earned that spot. But what it shows to everybody - that we knew - we feel like we have two good quarterbacks that can go out and play for us at a high level and help us win. So if Tony's available, he's out there to start, yes."
With Kitchings using the word "if" a couple of times in that quote, a follow-up question was asked on Muskett's current status. Kitchings confirmed what Elliott told reporters on Tuesday that Muskett has been a full participant in practice and has been doing "everything" he needs to do in practice. So, if Muskett is fully available and playing without limitation now, it seems to be essentially confirmed that he'll be the starter for the Cavaliers on Friday.
"He's been doing everything good, but it's 48 hours away. You never know what happens," Kitchings added.
That puts an end, at least for now, to the notion that Virginia might stick with the hot hand in true freshman Anthony Colandrea, who shined in his first collegiate start against JMU on Saturday, going 20/26 for 377 passing yards and two touchdowns, breaking several Virginia freshman quarterback records, and earning ACC Rookie of the Week honors.
Many saw that performance to mean that Colandrea should be the starter going forward, which is a reasonable conclusion to draw based purely on the box scores of Virginia's two games so far. In week 1, Tony Muskett completed 9/17 passing attempts for 94 yards, stats that don't particularly compare to what Colandrea did the next week while Muskett sat out with a left shoulder injury he suffered in the fourth quarter of that game.
With that said, the competition level must be taken into account. JMU is a quality team, but nowhere near the level of Tennessee, a top 10 team in the country filled with the best athletes the SEC has to offer. The general sentiment coming out of Virginia's 49-13 loss to the Volunteers was that Muskett played pretty well in incredibly challenging circumstances and showed plenty of promise as UVA's starter going forward. What we can only guess is how Muskett would have fared had he started against JMU. Would he have played as well as Colandrea? We'll never know.
Muskett won the job fair and square in fall camp and the UVA coaching staff is going to continue to go with him at quarterback over the rising star Colandrea as long as Muskett shows he can do the job. Colandrea is UVA's quarterback of the future and will almost undoubtedly get more opportunities to play this season - possibly including Friday's game at Maryland - but the Virginia coaching staff is going to give Muskett a chance to hang on to the job first.
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