Tall Task Awaits Cavaliers in Second RoundTall Task Awaits Cavaliers in Second Round

Tall Task Awaits Cavaliers in Second Round

In a Midwest Region second-round game in Philadelphia, No. 3 seed UVA meets No. 6 seed Tennessee at 6:10 p.m. Sunday, with the winner advancing to the NCAA tournament's Sweet Sixteen.

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

PHILADELPHIA — Virginia and Tennessee faced each other early last season in a tournament in the Bahamas. It might as well have been a decade ago, for all the bearing that game, a 64-42 win for the Volunteers, figures to have on the teams’ meeting Sunday in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

UVA hired a new head coach, Ryan Odom, last spring, and only three of his players were on Grounds in 2024-25. None of them is in the Cavaliers’ rotation this season. At Tennessee, Rick Barnes is still the head coach, but most of his roster also has turned over since last season.

The Vols’ leading scorer, All-SEC guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie, was at Maryland last season. Tennessee forward Nate Ament, a second-team All-SEC pick, was in high school.

“They have a new team as well,” said Virginia reserve guard Elijah Gertrude, who sat out last season while recovering from a knee injury.

In the NCAA tournament’s Midwest Regional, UVA (30-5) is seeded No. 3 and Tennessee (23-11) is No. 6. They’ll meet in a second-round game today at 6:10 p.m. at Xfinity Mobile Arena, with the winner advancing to the Sweet Sixteen.

Neither team has much had time to prepare for the other. Both won first-round games Friday in Philadelphia. Virginia ousted No. 14 seed Wright State 82-73 that afternoon, and Tennessee eliminated No. 11 seed Miami-Ohio 78-56 later in the day.

Barnes has had a storied coaching career at George Mason, Providence, Clemson, Texas and, now, Tennessee, and physicality and toughness are the trademarks of his teams. The Wahoos have a good idea what to expect Sunday night. One of their assistants, Bryce Crawford, worked for Barnes at Texas, and Odom has known Barnes for years.

“He’s been running a particular style for a long time,” UVA associate head coach Griff Aldrich said. “It’s a little bit unique [this season], because you have different personnel, and that fits into the style differently. But it's the same general system and style. This group probably has less shooting than they've had in the past, and they're much more focused on getting into the paint and offensive-rebounding, playing a bigger lineup.”

Tennessee’s starters include 6-foot-11, 243-pound Felix Okpara, 6-foot-11, 240-pound J.P. Estrella and the 6-foot-10, 207-pound Ament, who’s from Manassas, Va. The Hoos aren’t small by any stretch—Johann Grünloh and Ugonna Onyenso are 7-footers, and Thijs De Ridder stands 6-foot-9—but Tennessee will pose different challenges for them than Wright State did.

“It’s all about the physical part of the game and how ready we are physically to battle,” Onyenso said Saturday.

Unlike Okpara and Estrella, Virginia’s big men are comfortable shooting 3-pointers. As a team, the Cavaliers are shooting 36.3% from beyond the arc, and seven players have made at least 20 treys each this season.

“I think [the Vols] having to guard us will create some challenges, because of their big guys,” Aldrich said. “They play two very big guys, and are they going to be able to move around and guard our [post players]? There’s obviously a challenge for us to guard their two big guys, who are almost interchangeable at the center position, but they've got to guard us as well.”

Jacari WhiteJacari White

The Cavaliers are looking to reach the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2019, when they went on to capture the NCAA title. Odom was head coach at UMBC that season. He later spent two years at Utah State and two at VCU before taking the job at UVA, where his father, Dave, had been an assistant under Terry Holland.

The younger Odom’s first head job was at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne, from which Barnes graduated, and storylines abound in this game.

“Coach Barnes has meant so much to the game of basketball, and he and my father are close and good friends,” Odom said. “Our families are close, and it's just really neat to see the sustained success that he's had, and he's done it the right way at every spot. He's won at every spot.”

Odom noted the support he received from Barnes after taking over at Lenoir-Rhyne. “He was always there for me at times when I needed it, and certainly he had his own seasons going,” Odom said, “but he was always willing to chat from time to time and followed from afar.”

Odom is well-versed in the history of UVA men’s basketball, and when he brought his team together for the first time last June, he “emphasized the importance of what it is we're actually playing for,” guard Jacari White said Saturday. “Not just ourselves, [but] playing for the University and trying to continue the legacy that was left behind by the players before. And so we honor that and take pride in that, and I feel like that shows in our play.”’

White (North Dakota State) and Dallin Hall (BYU) are among the seven transfers who joined the Virginia program after the 2024-25 school year.

“We had two main goals for the summer: really connect with each other and really connect with the program,” Hall said. “We spent a lot of time together on and off the court. We have a lot of fun together on and off the court ... The coaches have done a great job of creating this family culture where we hold each other accountable, and then we have pillars of excellence that we stick to and try to hold each other accountable to as well.”

White came off the bench to score a season-high 26 points against Wright State, and each one of his six treys came at a critical time.

“He played a terrific game,” Barnes said. “I think they would say he impacted the game for them [Friday] the way Ja'Kobi did for us. Get up off the ground, get a shot off any time he wants it. What was impressive is when they pushed out on him, he was able to get by, made some terrific layups, some nice shots off the back board.

“So it presents a challenge, and we like our individual defense. We think we have guys who can guard the ball, but we have never asked a guy to guard anyone of that caliber one-on-one. It has to be a team defense.”

Gillespie also hit six 3-pointers Friday, and he finished with 29 points against Miami. Estrella added 14 points and Okpara 12 for the Volunteers. Ament, who has battled injuries this season, went scoreless, but he’s averaging 17.0 points per game.

“He’s just a generational talent,” Odom said of Ament. “He’s 6-10. He can dribble. He can pass. He can shoot. He can make hard 2s. He rebounds. He plays hard. He's just really good.”

As for the 6-foot-1 Gillespie, he’s “dynamite,” Odom said. “Just when you think you have him cornered, he gets around you and finds a way to get to the basket. He banks big shots. He's really good on defense in terms of stealing the ball. He's got great hands. He's a tremendous floor general. He's been doing it at every spot: Belmont to Maryland to now at Tennessee. He's just a winner.”

The Cavaliers have studied film on Tennessee several times this weekend. They practiced at the Xfinity Mobile Arena on Saturday and had a shootaround at the famed Palestra on Sunday afternoon.

With so little time to prepare for the game, Aldrich said the coaching staff has to make sure not to overload the players with information about Tennessee.

“A huge part of coaching is figuring out, when you have a foundation and you have base principles, are you better off just doing what we do and doing it well, or are you better off tinkering and adjusting constantly?” Aldrich said. “And so there's a real balance between the two. Do just keep it simple and go with what got you 30 wins, or do you want to adjust and make changes? And so that's certainly something we've thought a lot about.”

In the ACC tournament, De Ridder noted, “you know the teams. But here, you never saw [the opponent] before, basically. So you have to start from zero. But our coaches have done a great job this whole year, so we don’t worry about that, to be honest.”

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Thijs De RidderThijs De Ridder