No. 23 Cavaliers Roll in ACC Home Opener

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — If the late hour bothered the Virginia Cavaliers on Wednesday night, it wasn’t apparent.

In a game that tipped off at 9 o’clock, UVA went ahead to stay on a 3-pointer by Thijs De Ridder with 9:45 left in the first half. From there, the 23^rd-ranked Wahoos steadily pulled away from California, rolling to an 84-60 victory before a lively crowd at John Paul Jones Arena.

“Give Virginia a lot of credit,” Cal head coach Mark Madsen said. “We came in, we wanted this game, we needed this game, and they won by 20.”

For Ryan Odom, it was his ACC home opener as Virginia’s head coach, and he saw much that he liked, especially his team’s effort on defense. The Golden Bears (13-3 overall, 1-2 ACC) hit 10 of their first 16 shots from the floor but encountered considerably more resistance from Virginia the rest of the way. UVA, which led by 10 at the break, held Cal without a field goal for a stretch of more than eight minutes in the second half.

For the game, the Bears shot 35.2% overall and 15.8% from 3-point range.

“They're tough to guard,” Odom said. “They seek a lot of 3s, and 50% of their shots are from 3. So you have to get out there, and so you run the risk of getting beat off the bounce. It’s hard to do both when you're playing against a high-volume, 3-point shooting team, and I thought our guys did a nice job. The discipline was there the majority of the night.”

Virginia (13-2, 2-1) outrebounded Cal 45-26 and gave up only four second-chance points. Moreover, the Hoos blocked nine shots, with 7-footer Ugonna Onyenso recording a game-high four rejections in 17-plus minutes off the bench.

It's a block party in Charlottesville 🎉

Hoos now have 9️⃣ blocks on the game!

📺 @accnetwork x @UVAMensHoops pic.twitter.com/qn2hXJp29j

— ACC Men's Basketball (@accmbb) January 8, 2026

At the other end of the court, the Hoos assisted on 23 of their 30 field goals and shot 50 percent from the floor. Five UVA players scored in double figures: Malik Thomas (20 points), De Ridder (12), Onyenso (12), Johann Grünloh (12) and Sam Lewis (12). Onyenso also grabbed a game-high nine rebounds and had a steal that he turned into a crowd-pleasing dunk.

The Cavaliers’ other 7-footer, Grünloh, had eight rebounds and one block. Onyenso and Grünloh “were a two-headed monster,” Odom said. “They both protected the rim really well, and they both were energetic with their play, and I was impressed.”

Freshman guard Chance Mallory didn’t reach double figures in points—he finished with eight—but he had a game-high seven assists and three steals.

“Chance is the real deal,” Odom said. “He's a really good player, and he's a competitor, and he's going to play hard for his team and play hard on each possession. He’s amazing. He can find things that shouldn't be there, and he makes it happen. And on defense too, all of a sudden he comes out of nowhere and grabs the ball, and we're off to the races the other way.”

For Thomas, a graduate transfer from San Francisco, it was his third game with at least 20 points this season. But that wasn’t what Odom liked most about No. 1’s play Wednesday night.

“It was his best defensive performance,” Odom said. “He fouled a couple of times there at the end, but overall, that was his best defensive performance of the year. And so he's really worked hard at that.”

The 6-foot-5 Thomas said UVA’s “coaches have been doing a great job of just staying on me on the defensive end, just knowing that I’ve got to stay engaged. My offense will come. But it's been a great process, honestly, because when I first got here I had a lot to work on, and I'm grateful to see it's finally paying off, and it's only going to get better from here.”

Junior guard Dai Dai Ames, who spent the 2024-25 season at Virginia, led Cal with 18 points.

“Dai Dai Ames is the ultimate competitor,” Madsen said. “I felt like collectively we didn't have enough collective fight and energy. However, we had certain guys that fought the entire night. Dai Dai was one of those.”

Ames isn’t the only Golden Bear with ties to UVA. Madsen’s assistants include Isaiah Wilkins, a beloved figure at JPJ. Wilkins, who has two degrees from the University, spent eight years with the Cavaliers: four as a player, two as a graduate assistant, and two as an assistant coach.

UVA paid tribute to Wilkins on the videoboard before the game, and he received a warm ovation from the crowd.

Coming off a one-sided triumph at NC State, Virginia won comfortably again Wednesday night. But Odom said he’s not worried about margin of victory.

“It’s more about how we're playing,” he said. “I thought our guys played well tonight. Defensively, we're trying to make strides, we're trying to get better. The guys are focused on that. Offensively, we can't lose that ability to really share the ball and put pressure on our opponents. I think we're improving. We can't stay where we're at, though.”

Four of the Cavaliers’ next six games are away from JPJ.

“Teams that want to compete for championships have to take care of home court,” Odom said, “and you have to find ways to win on the road. It's tough to win on the road. And our guys were able to do that the other day [at NC State], which was a huge, huge deal for us.”

UP NEXT: Virginia will play its second straight game against a West Coast foe Saturday. At 2:15 p.m., UVA (13-2, 2-1) hosts Stanford (13-3, 2-1) at JPJ. The game will air on The CW.

Stanford closed with a 14-1 run Wednesday night to stun Virginia Tech 69-68 in Blacksburg.

The Cavaliers, 1-8 all-time against the Cardinal, have dropped seven straight in the series.

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