Hoos Ready for Dress Rehearsal at JPJ

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Chance Mallory grew up going to University of Virginia basketball games at John Paul Jones Arena. Now, as a Cavalier, the 5-foot-10 freshman is about to play in front of fans at JPJ for the first time.

It won’t count as an official game. Those begin on Nov. 3 for UVA, which hosts Rider that night. But Mallory, a graduate of nearby St. Anne’s-Belfield School, is looking forward to Virginia’s second and final preseason exhibition. At 7 p.m. Friday, UVA hosts Villanova at JPJ.

“I’m definitely excited,” Mallory said, “especially just to play in front of my friends and family and all the people who support UVA and who I’ve been with in the stands for a while.”

The Wahoos’ new head coach is excited for Mallory, too.

“This will be his first time coming out of tunnel,” Ryan Odom said. “It’ll be my first time coming out of the tunnel as the coach at UVA. For our staff and all the players that haven’t played here before, it’s an exciting time. They’re going to feel it.”

A team that includes only three players who were in the program last season—Elijah Gertrude, Carter Lang and Desmond Roberts—faced outside competition for the first time last week in Nashville, Tenn., where the Hoos met Vanderbilt in an exhibition at Memorial Gym.

It was good “playing against a different team and not just people I’ve been practicing with,” Mallory said. “I’m just getting comfortable playing in front of larger crowds than I’ve ever played in front of before. So it was definitely a great learning experience for me and the team in general.”

The format differed from that of a college game—the team played four 12-minute quarters instead of two 20-minute halves—and the two programs opted not to release statistics from the exhibition. After a practice this week, though, Odom shared his impressions of the Cavaliers’ performance against the Commodores, who are in their second year under head coach Mark Byington.

Playing a 48-minute game “was different for everybody,” Odom said, “but it was certainly beneficial for us and for them to be able to play against somebody else. Rarely are coaches satisfied at this point, and I think we left a lot to be desired in certain categories. But there were some great things that we did as well, that we want to see more of.”

UVA was bigger inside than the Commodores, who had “quick guards and guys that can shoot, versatile players that stretch you and test you,” Odom said. “So that was a really good test for us.”

Odom said his team’s “offensive execution at times was pretty high. I think the offensive rebounding picked up. We had some turnovers at times that we couldn’t afford, but overall the ball security was pretty good. We missed some open shots. We missed some free throws. They’re things that are going to happen over the course of the game, but defensively, we’ve got to be more stingy. We’ve got to get teams deeper into the clock. We did get them deep into the clock some, but not enough. So there needs to be a consistency with that.”

Of the 12 newcomers on UVA’s roster, three are freshmen (Mallory, Silas Barksdale and Owen Odom) and two others (Thijs De Ridder and Johann Grünloh) are imports from Europe. The rest are transfers: Malik Thomas from San Francisco, Dallin Hall from BYU, Devin Tillis from UC Irvine, Sam Lewis from Toledo, Jacari White from North Dakota State, Martin Carrere from VCU, and Ugonna Onyenso from Kansas State.

It was clear during the exhibition, Mallory said, that the Hoos are still building their cohesiveness.

“We’re still trying to figure things out,” he said. “We’ve been practicing against each other [since June], but that doesn’t really replicate playing against a completely different team. So having these two games is definitely helping us when we watch film, and it’s definitely helping us now in practice to see what we can do better.”

Odom said the first exhibition “was probably weird for all of us. It’s a different setting [in Vandy’s arena], and then you have a whole new team. There’s a lot of growth that needs to take place between now and when we play Rider, game one. And so we’ve been working since we got back and highlighting all the positive things that we saw and really working on some of the things that we need to do better.”

He liked what he saw in Nashville from his frontcourt, including 7-footers Grünloh and Onyenso and the 6-foot-9 De Ridder, who “all did really well,” Odom said.

Statistically, Odom said, the 6-foot-7 Tillis “didn’t necessarily stick out, but I thought he played a good game.”

On the perimeter, Thomas displayed his trademark scoring prowess—he averaged 19.9 points per game for San Francisco last season—and “Jacari made some shots and did well,” Odom said. “Chance came in and gave us some good minutes. Elijah got his feet wet and got out there a little bit, and we’re hoping for more there as well, as he gets more comfortable. But overall I was pleased, certainly, with the roster. We played everybody, basically.”

Under Odom, the Hoos will play at a faster pace on offense than they did under Tony Bennett or Ron Sanchez, the team’s interim head coach in 2024-25. They also plan to regularly press full court. They tried to do so in Nashville, with mixed results.

“That was one of the areas where we needed to improve,” Odom said. “We did not measure up to our standard, partly because we just didn’t get in it enough. We didn’t put enough pressure on them after we made a basket. So we’ve been working on that this week.

“I was hoping for it to be a little bit better than it was. The guys know it and they’ve seen it on film now, and they’re doing better in practice.”

The exhibition against Villanova, which also has a new head coach in Kevin Willard, will follow the traditional college format of two 20-minute halves.

“I understand it’s not a real game or anything, but we’re treating these [exhibitions as] fact-finding missions for us to help us get better, and we certainly want to perform well,” Odom said. “It doesn’t matter when we’re playing or who we’re playing. We want to perform really well and we want to play to a high standard.”

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