Virginia wasted little time proving the program’s dominance, opening the season with back-to-back victories over higher-ranked opponents.
"This was a team performance that showed that this year's team acquiring their highest CSA national ranking ever is no fluke,” assistant coach Mark Broekman said, “... A brilliant team performance by all."
Despite entering as the ranked team, the Virginia men once again fell to a lower-ranked Hokies squad for a second straight year.
“My time in college has played a huge role in my growth, both as a player and as a person, and I now feel prepared to take this next step and embrace a new challenge in my life,” Jódar wrote.
“Every win on the road is like gold,” Odom said. “This particular group understands that. If you want to compete at the highest level of the ACC and compete for a championship, you have to win games on the road. The eventual champion will do that.”
“Not only were we getting out [strategized] by them, but we were getting beat on technique that we should know better,” Garland said. “So I got to figure out how I get our knowledge as coaches into their brains and have them actually do it.”
Considering the program received a transformational multi-million dollar donation last year, expectations should no longer be about improving on the margin. In the 2025-26 season, Virginia must be an NCAA Tournament team.
Historically, the NCAA has taken a hardline stance — student-athletes and staff are strictly prohibited from betting on any sport, at any level. Yet as gambling becomes ubiquitous, enforcing that blanket ban has grown increasingly difficult.
Virginia, now 8-4 overall and 0-1 in the ACC, has faced more consecutive road matches than any other winter sports team, a grueling reality caused by the Memorial Gymnasium renovations.
The Cavaliers will need to find ways to turn their narrow losses into wins as they enter arguably the most important stretch of the season. Their next five duals will all be conference matches, with three taking place at home.
The 65-58 loss marked Coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton's sixth straight loss against Duke in her time at Virginia, which serves as a brutal reminder of Agugua-Hamilton’s continued struggles against ACC elites.
Virginia lost only one set in their three season-opening matches.
“He's got a lot of things going for him,” Gelnovatch said this season.
Virginia and Duke headline the top of a ‘middle of the pack’ section. The Blue Devils are in second place while the Cavaliers are in third, but both teams have had wildly different results to date.
The good news is that Grünloh came to Charlottesville with experience playing against bigger, more experienced frontcourts — now, he is in a role in which he can excel by doing the little, simple things right.
Riding a 70-55 victory over Stanford and a 3-1 ACC record, Virginia saddled up for its first game against a ranked opponent Tuesday night at the KFC YUM! Center in Louisville, Ky.
As a program coming off its first ACC title and NCAA runner-up finish, the Cavaliers’ approach to their mid-season break matters.
The Cavaliers cruised to dominant victories over both unranked Penn State squads, with the women sweeping all 10 events en route to a 154-61 win and the men taking all but one race to prevail 133-85.
Few college programs in any sport get the chance to chase a sixth, seventh or eighth straight national title. But if that dominance means some recruits would rather try to end the run than extend it, that’s simply the tax of being the best.
The Orange that came to JPJ, however, showcased stingy defense all afternoon and forced Virginia into multiple shot clock violations, errant passes and a whopping 21 turnovers.
