Virginia Finishes Strong, Downs Northwestern

Plus

A win is a win is a win. In a wildly entertaining game that featured six ties and 12 lead changes, Virginia slipped past the first Power 4 opponent of the season. Physicality was the order of the day as the two teams combined to commit 51 personal fouls and shoot 60 free throws. Yes, I was late for dinner…

Plus

Thijs De Ridder scored a career high 26 points on 9/15 shooting and an 8/9 night from the charity stripe. Chance Mallory – I think I am just going to call him Stud from now on – matched his career high of 16 points on the strength of a 9/10 outing from the free throw line. Oh, and Stud, all 5’10” of him, had a game-high eight rebounds.

Plus

Despite the exploits of De Ridder and Stud, the star of the night was Dallin Hall, Virginia’s pass-first point guard, who after going scoreless in the first half, rebounded with 11 points in the second. He had two huge threes. The first is shown below, but the second, with the score Virginia up 71 – 70, gave the Hoos the cushion they would need to secure the win. In the last minute Hall was 4/4 from the line as Virginia extended their 74 – 73 lead to 78 – 74. Both Mallory and De Ridder had fouled out and Hall took over, which is something we hadn’t seen yet in the early going.

THIS IS VIRGINIA BASKETBALL‼️

📺 @CBSSports

🔹⚔️🔸#GoHoos pic.twitter.com/m1RVgLtLUY
— Virginia Men's Basketball (@UVAMensHoops) November 21, 2025

Minus

Virginia’s shooters had an ugly night from deep. The Cavaliers shot 5/24, or 21%, as Mallory went 1/4, Jaccari White was 1/3, and both Malik Thomas and Sam Lewis were 1/4. Usually those kind of numbers will doom a jump-shooting team, but it was a positive that Virginia won this game despite such a performance.

Plus

With Virginia up 40 – 34 and with the ball with 33 seconds remaining, head coach Ryan Odom called timeout to diagram the last play. One of my complaints about Tony Bennett is that he wouldn’t call timeouts, preferring to let his guys “figure it out.”

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Malik Thomas took the shot with 20 seconds remaining (he missed.) Why diagram a play designed to ensure you get the last shot and deny Northwestern the opportunity to get much of a shot off and then shoot with so quickly?

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Virginia’s Mallory and Northwestern’s Jayden Reid are both listed at 5’ 10” and therefore were the smallest men on the court, by a considerable measure. They put on a show – Reid had 25 points on the night – and went right at each other all game. It was a lot of fun watching these two pint-sized dynamos face off.

Plus

If watching players mature and develop over four years is why you love college sports, well, then, you ought to love Northwestern’s Nick Martinelli. As a freshman, he scored 2.5 points per game and last year in his junior year, he led the Big Ten in scoring at 20.5 ppg. That kind of jump is wild.

Minus

This was a game that was decided at the foul line. And good for Virginia, they shot 30/36, which will win you a lot of games. De Ridder and Mallory fouled out, as did Northwestern’s Arrinten Page and Tre Singleton. There were some amazingly stupid fouls that will have both head coaches lecturing long into the night. Virginia was the beneficiary of the most questionable six or seven calls of the game, and that margin is what ultimately gave them the win.

Plus

Devin Tillis, who had surgery after the Vanderbilt exhibition, returned to action today. He looked rusty, but he hasn’t played in a month. The fact that he’s back on the court now, a full month before the start of ACC play, is a great sign.

Minus

This game was played at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, as part of the Greenbrier Tip-Off. It’s supposed to be a chance to break out of the rut of early season cupcakes, played on a neutral floor. Except that this was, in essence, a home game for the Hoos. It is only two hours away. (Northwestern fans had a 10-hour drive or else had to take a plane.) For NET purposes, the game will read as a neutral site, but in terms of preparation for playing in Cameron or Cassell, well, that was a swing and a miss.

Minus

The days of 10 players getting double-digit minutes may be over. Elijah Gertrude never got off the bench and Ugonna Onynesu, just two games away from perhaps the most dominant performance of a Virginia player this season, saw just nine minutes. Even after De Ridder fouled out, Onyensu didn’t play, as he got six of his minutes in the first half. It seems way too early to be whipsawing his minutes like this.

Minus

The pre-season hype around Johan Grunloh was that he was a supposed 2nd rounder in last year’s NBA draft and that he came to Virginia to boost his stock and become a first-rounder this year.

I think Virginia is going to get a couple of years of Grunloh’s services because he is not NBA ready at all. He’s showing out on the defensive end. Coming into the game, he was the country’s leading shot blocker – though after a two-block night, he’s going to drop down the leader board – and he was active on the offensive glass. He was supposed to be the stretch-4 who could pop out and do damage from beyond the arc, and he’s not doing that. Grunloh is now 1/10 on the season and he’s shooting under 50% from the free throw line. He is seven foot, and you can’t teach height, but at the moment, he’s looking more like TJ Power than a guy who’s going to make a living in the NBA.

Next Up: Virginia’s second game of the Greenbrier Tip Off is Sunday, November 23rd against Butler. Game time is 2:00pm and the game will be on the CBS Sports Network.