By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The ninth-ranked UVA men’s basketball team, after never trailing in its season opener, started more slowly in its second game. The end result, though, was the same: a blowout win for the Cavaliers at John Paul Jones Arena.
The opponent this time was Northeastern, which trailed by only seven at the break Friday night. The Huskies cut their deficit to five early in the second half, but after that it was all Virginia.
The Wahoos led by 27 with 5:00 remaining and ended up winning 97-72 before an announced crowd of 12,620.
“Everybody knew what the job had to be for the second half, and we did it,” said second-year point guard Chance Mallory, who finished with 20 points, five assists and four steals in 27-plus minutes.
Led by Rashad King and Louis Bond, who combined for 49 points on 17-for-30 shooting, Northeastern took advantage of Virginia’s lapses in the first 20 minutes. At halftime, the Cavaliers’ coaching staff stressed what needed to change.
“I feel like our energy was really low in that first half,” Mallory said.
“We’re asking them to do a lot of things,” Virginia head coach Ryan Odom said of his players. “We're asking them to press. We're asking them to crash. We're asking them to play transition defense, and pick and roll, and share the ball, and all these different things, and play fast, and it can be tiring. I thought our guys did a nice job of fighting through some of that fatigue, sticking together when it wasn't going great, and found a way to turn it in our favor.”
Virginia guard Sam Lewis matched Mallory’s 20 points and also had four assists. Three other Cavaliers also scored in double figures: forward Thijs De Ridder (16 points), center Johann Grünloh (13) and guard Elijah Gertrude (10).
“I thought our guys played hard and competed,” Northeastern head coach Bill Coen said. “We were simply overmatched by a better team tonight. It’s a very talented group Coach Odom has, and they have the size, skill, depth and shooting.”
The Hoos shot 61.3% from the floor in the second half and 54% for the game. What impressed Odom more than his team’s prolific offense, though, were the hustle plays made by Mallory and Gertrude.
Odom singled out a play on which, he said, Gertrude looked like “Superman diving towards the bench. I turned around and all of a sudden he was, like, parallel to the ground.”
Knighted ⚔️ #GoHoos https://t.co/fNJ4hzaGXB
— Virginia Men's Basketball (@UVAMensHoops) November 7, 2026
In the locker room afterward, the Cavaliers honored the 6-foot-4 Gertrude as the player of the game. He was 3 for 4 from 3-point range and also grabbed five rebounds, three of them at the offensive end.
“It’s awesome to see what he's been doing,” Mallory said of Gertrude, who missed the 2024-25 with a knee injury. “He's worked so hard on his game, especially his jumper. So to see him consistently hit shots is awesome. Everybody knows how athletic he is, and he's really helping us on the defensive end as a spark off the bench, just creating skills, causing havoc, and knocking down shots.”
Gertrude, who played well in Virginia’s three preseason exhibitions, came off the bench to score eight points Tuesday night in the season-opening win over Drexel.
“It really means a lot to me,” Gertrude said Friday night, “just knowing that the work is starting to pay off, everything that I've done [to overcome] the injuries that set me back, just being able to know that the hard work, the hours, the grind, the attention to detail, everything that I've done is starting to pay off.”